Research couldn't hold a candle to Development on making smooth transitions. You don't take a telephone switch offline to change a file format or the like. The development cycle used to be about three years: one year for design, one for implementation, and one to build a hybrid to bridge the transition. At 2AM on Sunday, you'd install the hybrid on one of the dual cross-checked processors at a time, so the switch was never interrupted. Later you'd dispense with the hybrid the same way. Doug