I know you know (and I don't do both, either ) but technically, you shouldn't "choose between" onsite and offsite backup - you really need both to be secure in case of theft, fire or flood, and yet have your backups most quickly accessible in case of a garden variety hard-drive failure.

I'm sure there's a level at which technology is rolled out more slowly than it ought to be, but honestly, I see more of the opposite (companies rolling out new technology that isn't quite ready for prime time). So I don't know that obsolescence in the computer world is really planned - I think it's more that technology is just marching on at an ever-quicker pace ... remember Moore's Law (yeah, I had to look it up to remember the name )? (The good news is that according to a cNet article cited in that Wikipedia article, the growth is expected to slow in a few more years.)