It took 0.4 seconds.

The first three results were sketchy links promising “cracked versions” and “lifetime keys for $10.” His cursor hovered. The old Arthur—the one who once downloaded a screensaver that installed three viruses—would have clicked. But the new Arthur, the one with a book deadline, scrolled past. He found the official Microsoft page, clicked the trial, and paid the $439.99 with a wince that turned into a deep, settling breath.

“It’s a one-time buy for a perpetual license,” she interrupted. “Think of it as buying a hammer that will never break.”

He was a freelance historian, not an IT guy. His latest book, The Forgotten Bureaucrats of the Ottoman Empire , was due in six weeks. The problem was his spreadsheet—a massive, unruly beast of a document tracking 19th-century tax records—kept crashing. Every time he tried to sort a column by “province,” the program would freeze, then vanish, taking an hour of work with it.