6. Age

In order to be useful, information needs to be up-to-date. In many cases information changes over time and so old or out-of-date information can be misleading or give you the wrong picture of what is happening.

Exams

As part of your revision, you have a go at practicing lots of exam questions before the big day and you work your way through the practice papers and model answers that your teacher has given you.

However, some of the papers are over five years old. How useful are the model answers for questions such as 'which storage device would you recommend?' and 'what is the average size of a hard disk?'

It is well known that things move very quickly in the world of ICT and hardware and software changes rapidly. What was a top-notch computer just three years ago is now probably a very low-spec machine. So the model answers are likely to be out-of-date.

Holidays

You have decided that you want to go on holiday with your friends and you want somewhere lively with lots of night life.

You have an old holiday brochure that your parents used a few years ago. You consider many different holidays and finally find one that looks like it would be perfect for you and your friends. The next day you go to the travel agents and book your holiday.

Imagine your horror when you all arrive at a nice sleepy town filled with old-aged pensioners. The brochure that you looked at was so old that things have changed drastically over the past few years.

House prices

Your parents are still thinking of selling their house. They need an idea of how much their house is worth right now. It would be no use to them being told by the estate agent how much their house was worth five years ago.