[Elecraft] K3 Firmware upload

[David Woolley]

J. Edward (Ed) Muns wrote:
> your K3 vs. what the latest version is available on the server.  If you want
> to download, simply click the 'Download' button, wait 2-3 minutes and that's
> it.

This thread concerns me. The download mechanism seems seriously 
over-engineered and to have built in obsolescence.

Whilst one might provide more user friendly wrappers for the upload 
protocol, I can see no sound reason why it should not have been designed 
so that one can upload updates using almost any off the shelf terminal 
emulator program, preferably as simply as a straight dump of an Intel 
hex file to the K3.

By forcing people to use a Windows application, Elecraft are requiring 
the use of a specific brand of software and the use of hardware that is 
orders of magnitude more powerful than actually needed to do the job, 
when the former should never be a requirement for using the K3 and the 
latter is not a requirement.

The built in obsolescence arises because the Microsoft revenue 
generation model depends on forcing people to continually update 
software to stand still.  This tends to mean that any Windows dependent 
software must be regularly updated.