Diki, You make a valid point. In recent years we saw the AMD CPU socket configurations go from 754 to 939 to AM2. Each change meant a new Motherboard would be needed to keep the latest cpu's.

There are 2 factors that may affect the comparison of upgrades to a 10 or even 20 year old personal computer to a Mediastation of the same age.

1) You do not necessarily need every upgrade that comes along. While I understand the software is continually improved and new releases come out periodically, some users hold pat with older versions of software that they have become comfortable with. Not upgrading doesn't take away from what you already have, it just doesn't add to it either. 10 or 20 years from now, barring any hardware failures that I cannot fix, my MSX should still play the same sounds it plays today.

2) Upgrade path is better with the MSX than many PC's. If you have an older PC you have to weigh out the benefits to upgrading versus buying a new one. The low price that new PC's sometimes have make upgrading the old seem less advantageous. If you are replacing everything but the case anyway why not just buy new.

With the MSX you have considerably more invested into the case and components than a cheap PC case. You have the quality Fatar Keybeds and the Pro grade XLR outputs/ inputs and the TFT Touchscreen. It should almost always be a lot cheaper to buy a new CPU or a Mainboard + CPU than a new Mediastation or any other high end music workstation. There is room inside the mediastation for any standard ATX mainboard. Currently supporting the AM2+ Phenom 2 Processors.

If a new mainboard design standard is adopted in the near future, there is a good chance even it would fit in the msx case. Many computer advances are in making the chips smaller. I can't imagine a new standard that would be too big to fit. The ports that extend from the mainboard through the rear of the MSX are covered with a small plate that can be easily machined if necessary to fit a new configuration.

So while nothing is ever truly 'future proofed' the Mediastation is in a pretty good position to go a long way.

Spalding, you mentioned, "that all future upgrades and their integration and all bug fixes and all repairs .....lay with the future of Liontracks and its future has to be built on a profitable business model the advances being tied to Lionstracs business success".

That is true. If Domenik goes out of business tomorrow, I may never get another feature added onto the MSX OS. I could only load new software that uses standards that the MSX already supports (Vst, Asio, Giga, ect..) But even this 'worse case' scenario doesn't leave me very limited, and from what I know of Domenik's commitment to this project, i have a feeling he will take good care of it for a long time to come.

Richard