Neowin: Living without updates

[Neowin]

Let’s face it, updates are now an integral part of our daily lives. There’s almost no way to get through a given week without being faced with some kind of update notification. A new version of an app is available, security fixes have been released, your favorite software now has less bugs and more functionalities... what was once the subject of scrutiny by many in the tech world is now part of the routine for anyone owning anything boasting a screen.

In an age where all our devices are connected, every piece of software related in part or in full to another, online services and cloud storage considered to be the norm, being up-to-date sounds more important than ever. Refusing updates on certain devices seems equivalent to refusing everything the 21st century has to offer. Gone are the days when the internet was something we would turn on and off on a single computer, when networks only existed in corporate environments.

In short, the smarter our devices get, the dumber they really become by being partly or entirely dependent on an external data source. Nothing seems to escape this tendency: phones, TVs, cars, game consoles, cameras, even firearms. All these devices are setup to allow external updates which leaves you with a simple choice: stay connected, up-to-date and exposed to various kinds of issues, or be offline, feel outdated and look like a caveman at the next CES.

Read: From my cold dead hands: Living without updates

This article is brought to you in partnership with Neowin

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https://www.techspot.com/news/61795-neowin-living-without-updates.html

 

[noel24]

Awsome M$ propaganda slipped into your site, but I'm affraid if they won't introduce into Home some sort of user control over non-critical, drivers and services updates that in the past made some problems, sooner or later people affected by incompatible update will disable MSUpdates altogether with some brute force hack found on the internet. And some of their clueless family and friends will follow, believing that M$ Devil will get them too. And M$ dream of always patched Windows will become MS Nighmare of never patched Windows.

 

[DelJo63]

Excellent article and clearly provocative to many. Consider the kinds of change induced by willy-nilly-updating:

(*) new feature
accept vs reject based upon NEED

(*) program fix
doing abc causes failure
? am I exposed ? => no, then ignore it, else fix it

(*) security issue
remote access induces failure and virus injection
? do I allow remote access ? => no, then ignore it, else fix it

The concept above and in the article implement the wonderful axiom
"If it isn't broken, then don't fix it".

My boat anchor pentium II is still running Win/98se and makes a great file server for backups and OMG, has not been updated in over 10 years. As it is not online, the risk is ZERO

[forgot to mention: My accounting is a QB 2009 version and I've stopped updating it too ]

 

[TheBigFatClown]

The article writer shares my line of thought. I think people have become irrationally "addicted" to updates because the word is generally synonymous with better, stronger, faster, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, its...its...its...Windows 10!!!!!! Which won't actually be "code complete" for another 10 years. Meaning addicts will keep looking for a high that long while Microsoft bashes them upside the head with advertisements in every possible way. Trying to get the addicts even more dependent on their services like cloud crap and Microsoft Office online. Which means people who are addicted to updates will keep coming back for more of the same ole crap that they don't even really need while purchasing all kinds of highly protected(DRM) content in the process.

It's really hard to believe how far Windows has fallen as a product. It has become nothing more than a nickel and dime marketing pimp to those who can't control their inner demons. Their insatiable desire to be satisfied with what they have. And their lack of critical and rational thinking to ask themselves, do I really need to do this? Why?

Windows Media Center had to die. It was the odd man out in Microsoft's new business model.

The sad part of all this though, is that if people only realized that the consumer is the one with all the power to say how things should and how they should not be, we would truly have an operating system that could see evolutionary improvements.

Too many people willing to bend over and cough at the first sign of anything "new" from Microsoft.