FOUR PROGRAMS ON BORROWED TIME

1 OPENOFFICE

Unlike Libreoffice, which is regularly updated and improved, Openoffice’s ( www.openoffice.org) ongoing development appears to have gone into steep decline. Steer clear of Openoffice because a lack of developers has led to unfixed vulnerabilities. It was last updated over a year ago.

2 THUNDERBIRD

Mozilla’s email client is a bit like the unloved sibling to the company’s favourite child Firefox. Thunderbird lost a large number of staff from its development team in 2012 and earlier this year Mozilla announced its intention to officially distance itself from the project. Thunderbird was updated to version 52.4.0 a few weeks ago, but its future looks very uncertain.

3 FLASH

You still need Adobe’s Flash plug-in in order to watch some online video content and play certain games, but it’s becoming far less ubiquitous these days, as the web switches to newer technologies. It’s also a big security hazard – Flash is one of the top three most exploited software tools, according to Kaspersky. Earlier this year, Adobe said it would kill Flash completely by 2020.

4 MICROSOFT PAINT

Microsoft made it clear how it felt about its 32-year-old built-in image editor (see screenshot) back in July this year when it listed the tool as ‘deprecated’ – meaning it would probably be axed in a forthcoming update to Windows 10. After a massive public outcry, Microsoft relented, saying that Paint would continue to be available. It remains alive – but for how long?