So it appears that working on older versions that are no longer supported could drive a software company into the ground.  However given the current economic times people may not want to or can not afford any currently available versions of maple to play around with or work on.  

If older versions were still available for a small fraction of the cost, in fact just making them available to buy shouldn't cost the company too much money if they were to use an on demand type of sales system.  That would keep overhead to a minimum.

Supporting the bug issue is a different matter since offering patches or updates would cost a considerable amount of resources.  Maybe new maplesoft employees could begin their training at the company by fixing bugs in older versions during their first months of training.  It wouldn't provide any immediate feedback for the company but at the same time it would familiarize them with the maple environment and get them problem solving right away.  Of course it may not work at all.

The business has to please the customers, but they also have to make a profit.  Opening up the market and selling older versions again might offer a window of opportunity for the company to make bug fixes but may also hold the company back from it's full potential on newer projects. 

After thinking a little you're probably right, and thanks for those interesting links.  But how much could it hurt a company to deligate a small amount of resources into finding bugs.  Of course the user base for Maple 4.0 is probably almost nearly zero if already isn't.  Consider microsoft still supporting XP or Win 95 for that matter, their clientelle would be incredibly huge, not that it already isn't, but the fact that they dropped support for older versions caused a lot of followers to stray (to MAC?  i don't know)  then again it's a drain on the resources and most likely doesn't make any money at all for the company from a business perspective. 

Being in a brainstorming mood, I'd like to wonder if Maple opted to sell older versions of it's platform for say ... $10 for Maple V ... or say $50 for Maple 6  etc... I don't know, I was just making up numbers but it would allow someone who wouldn't normally buy Maple to spend a few dollars to try out an old version.  They could have some sort of pricing formula so that their older products could still make them money and at the same time use that money to refine those older versions.  The older versions are still quite useful in some respects. 

Just a thought.  Maybe maplesoft will put some thought into it?

I submitted an SCR regarding this exact issue a while ago on June 16, 2009.  Regarding the Round screen display option. 

It appears it has not been fixed in the new updates. 

I submitted an SCR regarding this exact issue a while ago on June 16, 2009.  Regarding the Round screen display option. 

It appears it has not been fixed in the new updates. 

Not sure what to make of the lack of response from this but based on all of the feedback so far I'm guessing many people just don't have the interest in bug updates of old versions. 

As for a bug list.  I found a link here that supplies a list of over 5500 odd maple bugs http://maple.bug-list.org/ 

Using windows standard GUI in document mode.  I don't think classic version allows highlighting and I don't have access to a computer with Maple right now to check. 

Agreed, also please refer to this related post as well http://www.mapleprimes.com/forum/cpuperformanceusagemaple

I'm sure there is lots of room for performance improvements in the programming code. 

Okay, I was able to test some more results for interest

P4 Single processor 1.7Ghz 512 Mb RAM - 96%
P3 Two processor 733 Mhz 512 Mb RAM - 67%

I could not get the P4 machine to 100% by just pressing keys, in fact it seemed to level out around 87%.  No point in trying out laptops at a lower speed than the ones I've tried, they will most likely max out at 100% anyway.

Curiously though, Microsoft Word tops out at 18% but then settles below 10%.  Just holding a single key down results in near 0% usage while Maple hovers around 2%.  Does this mean there's room to increase efficiency?

Sorry I didn't mention that but it's all default,

Standard mode, document setting in 2D Math and extended typing. 

Here are some benchmarks for CPU usage I've found using Maple 12 with speed typing of the alphanumeric keys

Laptops

Toshiba Tecra P3 733Mhz 512Mb RAM - 100%
Toshiba Portege P3 933 Mhz 768Mb RAM  -   100%
 

Desktop

P4 - 3Ghz with 2.5Gb RAM - 25%

There are two other desktop machines I should be able to gather stats on, a P4 - 1.4 Ghz 1Gb desktop and a P3 - dual processor (yes two processor machine) 733 Mhz 512 Mb RAM machine - should prove interesting and a P3 single core 733Mhz 512 machine. 

It would be interesting to know if anyone else using machines of the P3 era laptops experiences 100% CPU usage as well.  Anyone with 1Gb of RAM in a P3 laptop?  Does anyone else even have access to P3's anymore?  Based on my own stats and what I've seen here there is a clear line in the sand between a P3 and P4 using Maple 12 at least below the 1Gb level. 

Okay, my laptop is actually a P3 933 Mhz with 750 Mb of RAM.  Found a couple of viruses so I thought that was the problem and I did a complete hard drive wipe and re-installed windows and with a clean install, re-installed Maple.  Still unfortunately my CPU usage still jumps to 100% when I do some fast typing.  As a comparison with notepad I can get it up to 21%.

So it appears it all comes down to a hardware issue with my laptop, I'll have to double check the system requirements but I'm sure I fall within range.  Perhaps if I bump up the RAM to 1Gb, it's possible the software is optimized for RAM above 1Gb.  In any case Maple shouldn't require much CPU power for just typing in characters.

It shouldn't use much of any cpu power if any at all when typing. 

However when I type and the CPU usage goes up to 100% there is a lag time when the letters are typed (it's not instantaneous).  As an example if I was typing writing a procedure or something, by the time I finished typing proc the letters o and c would not yet be up on the screen literally it would take 1/4 of a second for each letter to appear.  As you can see if I was typing in a long line it would lag far behind just a couple of letters as I am seeing on my laptop which definitely indicates a problem like a keylogger or a virus of some sort. 

At 20 or 30% it shouldn't really matter that much but in all respect, as Roman has mentioned, why should typing a character on the screen consume any CPU power at all?

It doesn't have to be real typing just any set of keys as fast as you can so my benchmark is probably roughly the same as yours.  Probably some bug in my laptop or something I'll have to wipe the drive or something as I have no virus software or firewall then again I don't hook that one up to the internet at all. 

As for CPU usage, do you think 15-20% is a bit on the high side just for typing something in?  Shouldn't it hang under 5%?  Also strange that Classic uses more CPU  than the standard GUI.   

However assigning values outside the length of a predetermined list is unallowed.

a[7]:=j;

Error, out of bound assignment to a list

However assigning values outside the length of a predetermined list is unallowed.

a[7]:=j;

Error, out of bound assignment to a list