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13 years of installers.. That's some impressive digital pack-ratting!

What's the idea? Just in case you ever need the installer again and it's no longer hosted online?

It's true that I don't trust the permanence of online resources, usually with good reason. But I can also be a bit of a digital hoarder. My IRC logs, for instance, go all the way back to 1999. It's funny because in meatspace I'm extremely tidy and don't keep any garbage. I have a single wardrobe with shelves of computer parts (mostly cables, wires and screws) and a few old CDs.

I have nothing from before April 26, 1999, the date when the Chernobyl virus destroyed my hard drive and wiped out all of kid me's QBasic programs (what a loss for humankind). Kid me could not afford the storage space for backups, nor did he have the discipline anyway.

You never know! Not the OP but I encountered a situation recently where my wife needed an old version of some software that was no longer available to download anywhere. (It pairs with an "smart" embroidery machine of hers.) Luckily I managed to find a copy of the installer in the temporary internet files directory of her old PC.

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