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The dreaded upgrade

By Tim Wood

Originally published in The Columbia Daily Herald on July 5, 1998

Just when I thought it was safe to go through the mail, it arrived.

It was a seemingly safe looking, although thick, mailer stuffed with floppy disc mailers. When I noticed the return address was the maker of our news software, I knew something was up.

My suspicions were confirmed when the contents came out of the envelope. It was the dreaded UPGRADE!

A few months ago, the news staff went through a software upgrade. A knowledgeable person flew in to install the upgrade, and I was assigned to help.

Computers are unpredictable machines, and software is no better. We ended up working well into the night as we dealt with several unexpected complications. But we finally got most of it working. There was one program that wasn't installed when the installer left. As it turns out, it was the hardest program to install. Within a week, it was installed and the bugs were worked out, thanks to telephone support from the software maker.

But it wasn't one of my more pleasant experiences.

I knew something was up when I looked through the new manual and saw some nifty new features to try out. However, one of the features wasn't available. The friendly technical support people explained that the manual was for the latest, latest version of the software - one step beyond what I had just suffered through installing.

So now, the wondrous upgrade has arrived, and I am contemplating its installation. This upgrade will not require an installer person to come in. We could upgrade some hardware and bring in an installer to take full advantage of the software's capabilities, but I think I'll keep it simple this time.

Upgrades may be the only thing keeping the software industry afloat. A few years ago, the introduction of Windows 95 was hailed as a great breakthrough. Now, we're hearing about Windows 98.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal, however, told of one company that was not going to upgrade. Their reason? It would be too expensive and too difficult.

Companies make big bucks on selling you upgrades of their software. But sometimes, the upgrades aren't worth the extra money. Microsoft Word was once a fairly nifty word processing program. But now, I read, it has grown so many features that it hogs mass quantities of memory and hard disk space.

I use a Macintosh at work, and when I start it, it seems to take forever to get up and running. It has the latest, greatest version of the Macintosh system software, as well as a few add-ons that were necessary to support the programming.

Once, back in the dark ages, I used a Macintosh that had an unusual feature: when you turned it on, it was on! There was no hesitation, nor was there any time wasted watching icons pop up across the bottom of the screen. You hit the switch, and it was ready.

Just a few moments before I started writing this column, I was asked to investigate why a file that was brought to the newspaper wouldn't open. It turns out that our version of this particular program, which is reasonably up to date, is not as current as the version that created the file. We had an alternative way to take care of the problem, so we did.

But at some point, we may have to help the bottom line of some software company and reluctantly buy upgraded versions of the software. Then we'll get to discover all of the "bugs," or malfunctions, and then wait for the "bug fix" version of the software. The "bug fix" version of most software manages to fix the problems of the previous version, but often introduces a few new ones. If you ever are tempted to buy a software program with a version number of 1.0, think very carefully. Consider waiting a while and letting someone else discover the bugs.

Anyway, now I have some software to install. I could do it right away, and risk tying up my life for several days. Or, I could stall. But there's one problem with that approach: by the time I get it installed, it will be time for the next upgrade.

But at least the manual and software will match.