Difficult to see how a Nord Electro ever COULD be obsolete...

All it does is vintage sounds!

But I buy one today, barring electrical failure, it will work in twenty years' time, a hundred years' time, whatever. I doubt that ANY VSTi will work in 20 years' time unless you keep the computer it runs on now (it's obvious you haven't tried running VSTi's under emulated OS's - it is so far a nightmare at best )

I am afraid that VSTi's and arrangers are two different things... But then again, you are talking to a guy that tries to not change arrangers more than once a decade or so, too! The only time I want to change arrangers is WHEN all the samples, sounds and styles are completely different! Otherwise, why move?

New VSTi's are always coming out that need the latest greatest CPU's and OS's just to run. Unfortunately, if you can't bring along your legacy VSTi's, you are boned. Do you go with the new, and lose the old, or do you stay with your legacy VSTi's and get denied access to the latest stuff..?

The thing is, NI have updated B4 etc. through quite a period. But now it's gone. Now you HAVE to buy something new, or freeze your VSTi rig where it is and forget anything new. But your Nord will still work... even when we are on 128bit computers with 32 cores running faster than light!