[ View menu ]

Software Updates Make Hardware Upgrades Undesirable

Occasionally thought about this in the past as well, or at least for the past year or so, but recent events definitely made the issue gain a whole lot more importance in my mind and in fact I already posted a quick rant about it somewhere else, on top of longer ones sent to the few people who’re still talking to me, more or less. As such, I should manage to make a quick post out of this train of thought, but keep it mind that it’s based on a rather angry rant and I’m definitely in no state of mind to make it much better.

Ever since getting the first computer, I always wanted something better, and as soon as I started being aware of what components were available and what they did, I constantly set targets and planned upgrades, the fact that at times I didn’t make any for several years being caused solely by lack of funds. Once I got to choose what will be purchased, I began to plan the next major upgrade almost as soon as I got one computer, or the components to build it, and would argue with my parents for years over the matter, eventually getting far less than I was aiming for, some two years after the date I had set for such an upgrade.
Well, the direction most software is heading in definitely made that stop being the case in recent years and I can now honestly say I’m actually afraid of the prospect of a computer upgrade. Yes, there are some reliability concerns regarding hardware as well, seeing as things aren’t built to last as much as they used to anymore and hardware failures are definitely something I never want to have to deal with, no matter how long I’ll end up using the components in question, but there are still some brands and product families I trust and, either way, newer hardware is clearly better in terms of performance, so there are reasons to be more careful and take even more time before making a choice, but there’s nothing about the hardware itself that could make me completely refuse a significant upgrade if given the chance.
However, it seems like software developers strive to take away as many user control and customization options as they can with every new version, constantly dumb down everything more and more and make components and tools less and less powerful, and therefore also less useful for advanced users. In addition, it seems that, at the very least, they care less and less about backwards compatibility and avoiding conflicts with older software or hardware, so one update requires others and may completely prevent you from using something else you want or even need from that point forward. Plus that free proprietary software, no matter how clean and trustworthy it used to be, comes more and more often bundled with questionable components that sometimes you’re not even allowed to opt out of installing, said components potentially providing entry points for malware or even behaving in ways that can easily cause them to be classified as malware or at least spyware on their own.

I think back and remember how I used to regularly look for updates or new versions on my own and install them as soon as possible, which after I got a permanent Internet connection frequently meant on or very shortly after release day, and there were also times when I was a rather early adopter of new versions that many needed time to come to terms with. However, in recent years I find myself going increasingly out of my way to avoid such updates unless necessary for security, and if security requires a new version that includes other changes as well instead of simply a minor update I may well start looking for ways to do without the program in question altogether.
I mean, I remember how I struggled to get Windows 95 despite the fact that others who supposedly knew better said my computer was too weak to be worth installing it, or how XP was the first piece of software I purchased legally, only some months after release, and then spent years defending it against the many who insisted it was terrible compared to 2000, or how I used even Vista for nearly five years without many complaints, yet now I wouldn’t even go anywhere near that piece of shit that’s supposedly the “modern” Windows! On top of that, the version of my antivirus that I’m still using is quite a few years old and I keep fearing they’ll stop proving definitions updates and support for it one day, because all those released since then are perfect examples of what I was saying above, taking more and more customization, monitoring and control options away from the users, the next version, which recently entered beta, apparently being a pinnacle of dumbing down. In addition, I just recently tried updating my PDF reader and immediately noticed suspicious behavior, which a quick search revealed to be caused by the crap it’s now bundled with, some of which the user can’t opt out of, so I had to do my best to clean up and go back to the version I had before.

In other words, it’s increasingly harder to consider software updates as upgrades and at the moment I see little reason to hope that the situation will improve in the foreseeable future, all evidence unfortunately pointing to the fact that it’ll continue to worsen. Yet it’s often impossible to upgrade hardware and install the same old software on it, in part because new hardware requires new drivers and the problems described in this post tend to apply to those as well, not to mention that new drivers may only work on certain newer versions of Windows even if support for the older ones hasn’t officially ended, which is definitely a sign that hardware manufacturers are completely fine with this state of affairs and want to enforce this trend instead of trying to reverse it.
As such, I quite simply ended up dreading the prospect of a major hardware upgrade for reasons that have nothing to do with the hardware itself and can’t understand why this is happening. I mean, the PC hardware market keeps growing and this growth is driven almost exclusively by the performance and enthusiast segments, while casual users and those interested in the value and mainstream segments are moving to mobile platforms. What this means is that there are many people out there using and building powerful computers, plenty of them upgrading individual components on their own, and most of these people know what they’re doing and obviously want to control all that power and customize their experience, and yet the manufacturers and developers that one would assume are at least somewhat interested in surviving on this market seem set on simply ignoring them while they focus on catering to those who are migrating to other platforms. It makes no sense…

0 Comments

No comments

RSS feed Comments | TrackBack URI

Write Comment

Note: Any comments that are not in English will be immediately deleted.

XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>