heatseeker

n. [IBM] A customer who can be relied upon to buy, without fail, the latest
version of an existing product (not quite the same as a member of the
lunatic fringe ). A 1993 example of a heatseeker was someone who, owning a
286 PC and Windows 3.0, went out and bought Windows 3.1 (which offers no
worthwhile benefits unless you have a 386). If all customers were
heatseekers, vast amounts of money could be made by just fixing some of the
bugs in each release (n) and selling it to them as release (n+1). Microsoft
in fact seems to have mastered this technique.

