Lifecycle of PostgreSQL releases

On Mar 14, 2007, at 6:17 PM, CAJ CAJ wrote:

Hello,

What is the lifecycle of a 8.0/8.1/8.2 releases? With 8.3 scheduled
to be released in July, what will be the status of the 7.4.x branch?

We are planning pg upgrades from 8.0.x/7.4.x to 6.2.x and were
wondering if it's worth waiting for the 8.3 release.

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially
the 7.4.x servers.

erik jones <erik@myemma.com>
sofware developer
615-296-0838
emma(r)

Erik Jones wrote:

On Mar 14, 2007, at 6:17 PM, CAJ CAJ wrote:

Hello,

What is the lifecycle of a 8.0/8.1/8.2 releases? With 8.3 scheduled to
be released in July, what will be the status of the 7.4.x branch?

We are planning pg upgrades from 8.0.x/7.4.x to 6.2.x and were
wondering if it's worth waiting for the 8.3 release.

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially the
7.4.x servers.

I don't really agree with this. If he is running 7.4.16 there very well
may be zero compelling reason for him to upgrade.

8.3 is shaping up to be a really nice release, it could very much be
worth it to wait 3-4 months and call 8.3 their static release for the
next 5 years.

Joshua D. Drake

erik jones <erik@myemma.com>
sofware developer
615-296-0838
emma(r)

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"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Erik Jones wrote:

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially the
7.4.x servers.

I don't really agree with this. If he is running 7.4.16 there very well
may be zero compelling reason for him to upgrade.

Really? There are any number of anecdotal reports of massive speed
improvements between 7.x and various 8.x versions. Not to mention a
few feature improvements.

Now it could well be that none of those affect the OP but 8.3 will have
the particular shade of magic pixie dust his queries need. But it seems
at least as likely that 8.3 will be no significant improvement over 8.2
for him. Without any real details about his app, you can't call it
either way.

I tend to agree with Erik that if you have a window now to upgrade off
of 7.x, you should do it, rather than waiting for the next release.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Erik Jones wrote:

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially the
7.4.x servers.

I don't really agree with this. If he is running 7.4.16 there very well
may be zero compelling reason for him to upgrade.

Really? There are any number of anecdotal reports of massive speed
improvements between 7.x and various 8.x versions. Not to mention a
few feature improvements.

There is zero question that 8.2 is faster than 7.4 *but* if 7.4 isn't
slow for them... Note, that I meant no reason for him to upgrade 7.4
*right now*. He could wait for 8.3. (I think he should get off 7.4 in
general)

Now it could well be that none of those affect the OP but 8.3 will have
the particular shade of magic pixie dust his queries need. But it seems
at least as likely that 8.3 will be no significant improvement over 8.2
for him. Without any real details about his app, you can't call it
either way.

I can't really argue for 8.2 versus 8.3, but I can argue that as 8.3 is
literally around the corner, it may make sense to wait.

Mileage may vary of course.

Joshua D. Drake

I tend to agree with Erik that if you have a window now to upgrade off
of 7.x, you should do it, rather than waiting for the next release.

regards, tom lane

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"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

I can't really argue for 8.2 versus 8.3, but I can argue that as 8.3 is
literally around the corner, it may make sense to wait.

Today is the ides of March ... while the most optimistic estimate I've
heard for 8.3 release is high summer. Maybe that's just around the
corner by some time scales, but I strongly counsel the OP not to try to
hold his breath till then.

regards, tom lane

Joshua D. Drake escribi�:

Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Erik Jones wrote:

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially the
7.4.x servers.

I don't really agree with this. If he is running 7.4.16 there very well
may be zero compelling reason for him to upgrade.

Really? There are any number of anecdotal reports of massive speed
improvements between 7.x and various 8.x versions. Not to mention a
few feature improvements.

There is zero question that 8.2 is faster than 7.4 *but* if 7.4 isn't
slow for them... Note, that I meant no reason for him to upgrade 7.4
*right now*. He could wait for 8.3. (I think he should get off 7.4 in
general)

He could wait for 8.4 as well, as it will be probably faster and have
more features than 8.3. Following your reasoning, one could wait
essentially forever.

--
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The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 00:10, Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Erik Jones wrote:

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially the
7.4.x servers.

I don't really agree with this. If he is running 7.4.16 there very well
may be zero compelling reason for him to upgrade.

Really? There are any number of anecdotal reports of massive speed
improvements between 7.x and various 8.x versions. Not to mention a
few feature improvements.

Now it could well be that none of those affect the OP but 8.3 will have
the particular shade of magic pixie dust his queries need. But it seems
at least as likely that 8.3 will be no significant improvement over 8.2
for him. Without any real details about his app, you can't call it
either way.

I tend to agree with Erik that if you have a window now to upgrade off
of 7.x, you should do it, rather than waiting for the next release.

I love pgsql as much as anybody, and I generally don't run the latest
release in production until it's about 6 months out of the gate.
Between testing and approval and upgrading all the systems that aren't
production, by the time a new version sees production it pretty much has
to be 4 to 6 months old.

I also tend to run every other version. I've run 7.2, then 7.4, then
8.1. I've tested and played with 8.2 and speed wise, it wasn't a
compelling enough upgrade to start the very long process of replacing
8.1 with. By the time 8.3 comes out, I'll be about ready to start
evaluating our next version of pgsql.

I have to say the update to 8.1 was very compelling, as the query
optimizer was much better, and the ability to use indexes on date
columns with references like now() - interval '5 days' was a huge thing
for my reporting apps.

There is zero question that 8.2 is faster than 7.4 *but* if 7.4 isn't
slow for them... Note, that I meant no reason for him to upgrade 7.4
*right now*. He could wait for 8.3. (I think he should get off 7.4 in
general)

He could wait for 8.4 as well, as it will be probably faster and have
more features than 8.3. Following your reasoning, one could wait
essentially forever.

You have got to be kidding. There is quite a bit of difference between 3
months and 17 months. From the persons email, he obviously has an array
of production machines. This isn't hack fest 2000, just load up whatever.

My professional opinion, and frankly the opinion we are telling our
customers (except those that will explicitly benefit from something in
8.2) is to wait for 8.3.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

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I also tend to run every other version. I've run 7.2, then 7.4, then
8.1. I've tested and played with 8.2 and speed wise, it wasn't a
compelling enough upgrade to start the very long process of replacing
8.1 with. By the time 8.3 comes out, I'll be about ready to start
evaluating our next version of pgsql.

I have to say the update to 8.1 was very compelling, as the query
optimizer was much better, and the ability to use indexes on date
columns with references like now() - interval '5 days' was a huge thing
for my reporting apps.

Yeah 8.1 was a great milestone, being able to allocate more
shared_buffers has been a great boon for many of our customers that are
running 4+ GIG of ram.

Joshua D. Drake

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Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

I can't really argue for 8.2 versus 8.3, but I can argue that as 8.3 is
literally around the corner, it may make sense to wait.

Today is the ides of March ... while the most optimistic estimate I've
heard for 8.3 release is high summer. Maybe that's just around the
corner by some time scales, but I strongly counsel the OP not to try to
hold his breath till then.

Well I guess that comes back to user requirements. Some general non
tested statistics:

1. More people will run 8.3 than 8.2. Why? Because 8.3 will be in the
wild as current stable longer than 8.2.

2. Red Hat ES will likely never ship 8.2, ES 5 shipped with 8.1. That
means more yet even more people will run 8.1 versus 8.2 (which doesn't
argue for 8.3 but does argue against 8.2)

3. Ubuntu Dapper, which is LTS (like ES) ships with 8.1, the next LTS
will ship with 8.3 (likely).

4. Novell SUSE, shipps 8.1.5 in 10.2, 10.3 is going to ship with 8.3
(unless 8.3 slips horribly)

4. Solaris (JoshB help me here), ships with 8.1.

The trend here is that although 8.2 is a good release, people won't see
the benefits of 8.2 until they install 8.3 or 8.4. Further, because
people are going to wait (we are talking generally here).

It just doesn't make sense, to go through an entire upgrade cycle over
multiple machines just to upgrade to what will likely be obsolete
(because 8.3 will be out) by the time he works out all the kinks of the
upgrade in the first place.

Not everyone will agree, and that's cool. If he wants to upgrade, have
at it.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

regards, tom lane

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"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

1. More people will run 8.3 than 8.2. Why? Because 8.3 will be in the
wild as current stable longer than 8.2.

Oh, gimme a break, Josh. A year or more from now that argument would be
relevant, but unless you are going to counsel your customers not to
update till mid-2008, it's completely irrelevant to whether it makes
sense to update now. If you *are* going to tell them to wait until
8.3.4 or so (which I can see an argument for, if you don't like being
an early adopter), won't you then be in exactly the same position that
"8.4 is just around the corner"?

Your other four points are mere rehashings of that one.

regards, tom lane

If they have a support contract for, say, RHEL, why migrate to something
that support contract doesn't cover? Those had better be some very
important features or some very critical bug fixes, the latter of which
are very likely to get backported if they're versions covered by a
support contract.

The upgrade question is "why?" not "why not?".

--
Brandon Aiken
CS/IT Systems Engineer

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Tom Lane
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 2:00 PM
To: Joshua D. Drake
Cc: Erik Jones; CAJ CAJ; pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Lifecycle of PostgreSQL releases

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

1. More people will run 8.3 than 8.2. Why? Because 8.3 will be in the
wild as current stable longer than 8.2.

Oh, gimme a break, Josh. A year or more from now that argument would be
relevant, but unless you are going to counsel your customers not to
update till mid-2008, it's completely irrelevant to whether it makes
sense to update now. If you *are* going to tell them to wait until
8.3.4 or so (which I can see an argument for, if you don't like being
an early adopter), won't you then be in exactly the same position that
"8.4 is just around the corner"?

Your other four points are mere rehashings of that one.

regards, tom lane

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Your other four points are mere rehashings of that one.

Yes. All of my points directly revolve around the reality that 8.2 is a
short cycle release and that 8.3 is a long cycle release. Further that
due to 8.2 being a short cycle release, it will not see as much
production action as 8.3 (and definitely not 8.1 per the current
enterprise releases).

That to me is an extremely valid point, and a point that my customers
have made *to me*.

Example discussion with customer:

Customer: CMD, should we update to 8.2.3
CMD: Is there something in 8.2.3 that will benefit you?
Customer: We don't know
CMD: Are you having problems with 8.1? (We try to push all customers to
at least 8.1)
Customer: No, it is just that 8.2 is the current release
CMD: True, but 8.3 is due out in the summer and 8.3 is a standard cycle
release
Customer: Oh... o.k. let's wait.
CMD: I think that is probably prudent.

I am not just coming up with this stuff to be difficult. This is real
world here. Couple the above, with my previous post and *unless* there
is something that 8.2 gives you explicitly (and there are reasons to
upgrade to 8.2), there *may* (note word *may*) not be a reason to upgrade.

Take that and add, that 8.3 is just around the corner and my argument
stands.

The only argument anyone that I see against the above is the, "upgrade
because it is shiny argument". Which indeed may (there is that word
again) be enough. In business, shiny can be bad.

What I see in this thread, is people saying 8.2.3 is the cat's meow,
which of course is true. That doesn't mean that you need to upgrade.

I have a 8 year old Saab 9-5 V6 Turbo. It has leather, heated and air
conditioned seats. True, it is 8 years old, but it only has 62k on it.
The new model, offers some better styling, a 4 cylinder with more
horsepower and the paint reflects light just a little better.

Does that mean I want to take my debt free car, and trade it in for a
new 40k loan? Not on your life, my 8 year old Saab has at least 2 more
years in it and I was smart and bought an extended warranty.

Why is it, that every time someone suggests that someone may not need to
upgrade to the latest and greatest paint job, social networking site or
piece of software that people get upset?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

regards, tom lane

--

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
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On Mar 15, 2007, at 1:55 PM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Your other four points are mere rehashings of that one.

Yes. All of my points directly revolve around the reality that 8.2
is a
short cycle release and that 8.3 is a long cycle release. Further that
due to 8.2 being a short cycle release, it will not see as much
production action as 8.3 (and definitely not 8.1 per the current
enterprise releases).

That to me is an extremely valid point, and a point that my customers
have made *to me*.

Example discussion with customer:

Customer: CMD, should we update to 8.2.3
CMD: Is there something in 8.2.3 that will benefit you?
Customer: We don't know
CMD: Are you having problems with 8.1? (We try to push all
customers to
at least 8.1)
Customer: No, it is just that 8.2 is the current release
CMD: True, but 8.3 is due out in the summer and 8.3 is a standard
cycle
release
Customer: Oh... o.k. let's wait.
CMD: I think that is probably prudent.

I am not just coming up with this stuff to be difficult. This is real
world here. Couple the above, with my previous post and *unless* there
is something that 8.2 gives you explicitly (and there are reasons to
upgrade to 8.2), there *may* (note word *may*) not be a reason to
upgrade.

Take that and add, that 8.3 is just around the corner and my argument
stands.

The only argument anyone that I see against the above is the, "upgrade
because it is shiny argument". Which indeed may (there is that word
again) be enough. In business, shiny can be bad.

What I see in this thread, is people saying 8.2.3 is the cat's meow,
which of course is true. That doesn't mean that you need to upgrade.

I have a 8 year old Saab 9-5 V6 Turbo. It has leather, heated and air
conditioned seats. True, it is 8 years old, but it only has 62k on it.
The new model, offers some better styling, a 4 cylinder with more
horsepower and the paint reflects light just a little better.

Does that mean I want to take my debt free car, and trade it in for a
new 40k loan? Not on your life, my 8 year old Saab has at least 2 more
years in it and I was smart and bought an extended warranty.

Why is it, that every time someone suggests that someone may not
need to
upgrade to the latest and greatest paint job, social networking
site or
piece of software that people get upset?

Are you saying you don't have a MySpace account :)?

erik jones <erik@myemma.com>
sofware developer
615-296-0838
emma(r)

In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, erik@myemma.com (Erik Jones) transmitted:

On Mar 14, 2007, at 6:17 PM, CAJ CAJ wrote:

Hello,

What is the lifecycle of a 8.0/8.1/8.2 releases? With 8.3 scheduled to be released in July, what will be the status of the 7.4.x
branch?

We are planning pg upgrades from 8.0.x/7.4.x to 6.2.x and were wondering if it's worth waiting for the 8.3 release.

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x.� And, no, it's not worth
waiting.� Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially
the 7.4.x servers.

I hope so too; if performance isn't a direct issue, and doing upgrades
is seriously inconvenient, it might well be worth waiting for 8.3.

We've got some little databases around here and there which don't
*NEED* upgrading from any perspective other than that we'd loosely
prefer to be on "modern" versions of PostgreSQL.

For a small "web contacts" database, or for a lightly loaded MRTG-like
application, an upgrade may not actually be very valuable.
--
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as unthinkable as fornication, or smoking pot." -- RMS

In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, jd@commandprompt.com ("Joshua D. Drake") transmitted:

There is zero question that 8.2 is faster than 7.4 *but* if 7.4 isn't
slow for them... Note, that I meant no reason for him to upgrade 7.4
*right now*. He could wait for 8.3. (I think he should get off 7.4 in
general)

He could wait for 8.4 as well, as it will be probably faster and have
more features than 8.3. Following your reasoning, one could wait
essentially forever.

You have got to be kidding. There is quite a bit of difference between 3
months and 17 months. From the persons email, he obviously has an array
of production machines. This isn't hack fest 2000, just load up whatever.

My professional opinion, and frankly the opinion we are telling our
customers (except those that will explicitly benefit from something in
8.2) is to wait for 8.3.

At Afilias, we're mostly thru our upgrades from 7.4 to 8.1; while I'm
running buildfarm on 8.2, there's only one case where I'm presently
considering an 8.2 upgrade (the app *would* specifically benefit), and
I'm expecting that we won't bother much with the 8.2 branch.

We had a particular challenge that some apps got stuck on 7.4 for
excessively long because of JDBC customization; that held back
upgrades. But now that that is "unstuck," I'm still not pushing to
schedule 8.2 upgrades for everything just because it's now "more
possible;" the upgrade process involves quite a lot of work, enough
that I think I'd rather skip to the next model.

I daresay that 8.1 was everything I was hoping for; the performance
improvements are looking really good. I was living with 7.4; 8.1 is
plenty better and I think I can probably live with that for a year
before saying "oh, that's not good enough - I want 8.3!!!"

I'm not stuck on that answer; there's one system I *do* want to put on
8.2. But I'm mostly inclined to wait for 8.3 for most of my "further
upgrade needs."
--
"cbbrowne","@","gmail.com"
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.

On Mar 15, 2007, at 10:22 AM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

He could wait for 8.4 as well, as it will be probably faster and have
more features than 8.3. Following your reasoning, one could wait
essentially forever.

Hmmmm... precisely the reason my cell phone hasn't been replaced in a
looooong time :-)

I'm evaluating whether to upgrade from 8.1 to 8.2 still... but the
jump from a 7.4 to 8.2 is to me a no-brainer once you've ironed out
the minor issues with syntax pickyness that 8.x imposes on some
sloppy queries that worked with 7.4

alvherre@commandprompt.com (Alvaro Herrera) writes:

Joshua D. Drake escribi�:

Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

Erik Jones wrote:

I really hope you meant upgrades to 8.2.x. And, no, it's not worth
waiting. Upgrade at the soonest available opportunity, expecially the
7.4.x servers.

I don't really agree with this. If he is running 7.4.16 there very well
may be zero compelling reason for him to upgrade.

Really? There are any number of anecdotal reports of massive speed
improvements between 7.x and various 8.x versions. Not to mention a
few feature improvements.

There is zero question that 8.2 is faster than 7.4 *but* if 7.4 isn't
slow for them... Note, that I meant no reason for him to upgrade 7.4
*right now*. He could wait for 8.3. (I think he should get off 7.4 in
general)

He could wait for 8.4 as well, as it will be probably faster and have
more features than 8.3. Following your reasoning, one could wait
essentially forever.

That *is* true for the case of the "really lightly used" database
where there isn't any particularly compelling reason to look to
upgrade.

- If it's providing results fast enough for the users, then they have
no reason to be demanding an upgrade.

- If it has enough functionality to support the queries they're
running, again, there's no good reason to demand an upgrade

The only reason to feel "forced" to upgrade is that at some point, the
old version essentially falls out of support.

I'd feel uncomfortable, today, about having any 7.3 databases around,
from that perspective, and I'd certainly be inclined to "leap" them
up, probably to 8.2. My discomfort level is such that I'd want to do
that now, before 8.3 appears. I fully expect that once 8.3 is around,
interest in supporting 7.4 will also begin to dwindle, and that's a
good enough reason to want to get off 7.4, not now, but soon enough.

Now, *eventually* Josh will want to upgrade to a new Saab, because the
old one will start getting expensive to maintain (fundamentally
because more and more bits of it will start aging noticeably). My
Honda Civic needs a bit of work now; in a couple years, the cost of
maintaining it may grow, and I'll want to get something new.
*Eventually*, I'll want to upgrade to a new cell phone because the old
one will be scratched up and the battery will cease to hold a decent
charge. But that's not true yet.

We don't need upgrades on these things *instantly* because of the huge
value of the utility of the upgraded features; we're using the
features modestly enough that we can afford to wait a while.

On the other hand, I have some apps where I'm quite looking forward to
8.3 because I expect to want to use 8.3's improvements in speed and
functionality Pretty Early in its release cycle.

Both scenarios can certainly occur.
--
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Rules of the Evil Overlord #206. "When my Legions of Terror park their
vehicle to do reconnaissance on foot, they will be instructed to
employ The Club." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/&gt;

As the owner of a 1986 Toyota Celica, I can accept the argument that a
newer car with slightly brighter paint might not be worth the switch.

However, considering the number of features proposed for 8.3, we might
not have 8.3 final until September/October. I am not saying that will
happen, but it is certainly possible. And we are now publicly stating
our proposed 8.3 release date, so we might be inundated with "Where is
8.3" questions in August --- again just a possibility.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Your other four points are mere rehashings of that one.

Yes. All of my points directly revolve around the reality that 8.2 is a
short cycle release and that 8.3 is a long cycle release. Further that
due to 8.2 being a short cycle release, it will not see as much
production action as 8.3 (and definitely not 8.1 per the current
enterprise releases).

That to me is an extremely valid point, and a point that my customers
have made *to me*.

Example discussion with customer:

Customer: CMD, should we update to 8.2.3
CMD: Is there something in 8.2.3 that will benefit you?
Customer: We don't know
CMD: Are you having problems with 8.1? (We try to push all customers to
at least 8.1)
Customer: No, it is just that 8.2 is the current release
CMD: True, but 8.3 is due out in the summer and 8.3 is a standard cycle
release
Customer: Oh... o.k. let's wait.
CMD: I think that is probably prudent.

I am not just coming up with this stuff to be difficult. This is real
world here. Couple the above, with my previous post and *unless* there
is something that 8.2 gives you explicitly (and there are reasons to
upgrade to 8.2), there *may* (note word *may*) not be a reason to upgrade.

Take that and add, that 8.3 is just around the corner and my argument
stands.

The only argument anyone that I see against the above is the, "upgrade
because it is shiny argument". Which indeed may (there is that word
again) be enough. In business, shiny can be bad.

What I see in this thread, is people saying 8.2.3 is the cat's meow,
which of course is true. That doesn't mean that you need to upgrade.

I have a 8 year old Saab 9-5 V6 Turbo. It has leather, heated and air
conditioned seats. True, it is 8 years old, but it only has 62k on it.
The new model, offers some better styling, a 4 cylinder with more
horsepower and the paint reflects light just a little better.

Does that mean I want to take my debt free car, and trade it in for a
new 40k loan? Not on your life, my 8 year old Saab has at least 2 more
years in it and I was smart and bought an extended warranty.

Why is it, that every time someone suggests that someone may not need to
upgrade to the latest and greatest paint job, social networking site or
piece of software that people get upset?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

regards, tom lane

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