And don't forget my favorite -- having a vendor of a third party library that you have to use starting development using the newest library only when pushed by their clients.

An application I have to support is about 1-2 years behind supporting newest OS / DB / Perl (for example, they are still validating and compiling against 5.8.x, just released Oracle 10g support in January, and have now clue what the current revision of HP-UX is). We don't do "dot-oh" releases, and we have a boatload of local apps to validate against their release, putting us even further behind.

It is a never ending battle to try to have them find out where we are or would like to go a couple of years out rather than asking the question where are you now (yes, they would ask surveys based on current platforms, and then come to the conclusion that moving forward was not a priority; thankfully the surveys have started to change).