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Are you getting sick and tired of "upgrading"?


Upgrades...  

20 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you sick and tired of being forced to constantly "upgrade"?

    • No
      5
    • Yes
      4
    • Hell YES!
      11

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Yes.  However, upgrades to support new games/features are obviously always desirable.  Upgrades which break previously working features to improve upon others are and always have been a major pain.  Perhaps the oldest complaint of the humble user.  Nothing new here.  I suspect developers of said software feel differently though.

 

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Why do you feel compelled to upgrade?

 

My home desktop is from around 2005 and it still runs Windows XP. I primarily use it for writing (Word 2000), photo editing (using some equally old MS software), and website development (using a freeware text editor). This hardware (and software) does everything that I need. I see no need to spend money to upgrade or replace it. Someday it will suffer a catastrophic hardware failure, and I will mourn its loss -- and only then I will replace it.  

 

I also manage to get 5 or 6 years out of a cellphone. I only moved on from my Note 3 last year because it was in an accident (water damage) and beyond repair.   

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I guess it depends on what is updating. My phone? Yeah-applications visibly change, making it a new learning experience or worse, taking away functions or forcing you to activate other functions on your phone like Location. Windows 10? Yeah-each major revision comes with some GUI change that makes it more of a hassle to get to where I need. Or updates break software BUILT INTO Windows like Photo Viewer, where it needed to be reset to open a photo in a folder. 

 

Some software on Macs will attempt to auto update and then decide to crap out because you're not on the right version. I believe the Dropbox program did that to me as I couldn't upgrade past Lion. I'm using a newer (1 year) MacBook for work that has El Capitan, so that clock is probably ticking for some applications.

 

But as others said-it's a time old situation, especially after the Internet was made public accessible. Want to do stuff online? Gotta have the latest software to stay "safe" or to keep the service safe for everyone (i.e. game services). So either update or don't surf on that particular machine. Or surf at your own risk.

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On 4/28/2020 at 9:35 AM, INVISIBLE said:

Emulators have their uses, but constantly having to upgrade them can be a royal pain in the ashtakasha.  Software, firmware on your classic gear, main computer or even cellphone, it seems like it's freaking endless.  Hence, the question of the poll....

 

Most of the emulators I use don't update that often anymore (They are pretty mature alread)

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2 hours ago, zzip said:

Agreed, I go years between updating Mame

I'm still running MAMEUI64 0.143 from June of 2011 on my desktop.  I'm running MAME4droid 0.139u1 on my Android Nvidia Shield.  There's an update it wants to download, but I won't let it, because what I have now works with my ROM set.

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Upgrading emulators is like maintenance time for your real hardware. You have to dust cartridge shelves, clean contacts and connectors, repair controllers, perform mods, organize and catalog it all, and more! So really no hassle. And you do not have to upgrade each new version.

 

Apple iPhone software updates seem painless and work well. No issue there.

 

Windows 10 is ridiculous. Changes and more changes for no good reason. OS'es are supposed to be stable and unchanging. Always afraid to update it because it breaks things. So I stopped.

 

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On 4/29/2020 at 12:39 PM, jhd said:

 

Why do you feel compelled to upgrade?

 

My home desktop is from around 2005 and it still runs Windows XP. I primarily use it for writing (Word 2000), photo editing (using some equally old MS software), and website development (using a freeware text editor). This hardware (and software) does everything that I need. I see no need to spend money to upgrade or replace it. Someday it will suffer a catastrophic hardware failure, and I will mourn its loss -- and only then I will replace it.  

 

I also manage to get 5 or 6 years out of a cellphone. I only moved on from my Note 3 last year because it was in an accident (water damage) and beyond repair.   

Do you not go on the internet with that computer?  My computer is also from 2005.  When support for XP was dropped I felt compelled to upgrade to Win7; something about security vulnerability.  Now that support for win7 was dropped, I felt compelled to upgrade to Win10, but it's not compatible, so windows 7 it is.  Should I be concerned?

 

I just upgraded my Galaxy S4 from android 4.4 to 9.  Many newer apps no longer installed on android 4.4.  I'm happy I did, android 9 runs great on the s4.

 

Upgrading application software like emulators are a piece of cake in comparison.

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59 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Do you not go on the internet with that computer? 

 

Certainly not! The installed browser is so old that it would be useless, not even considering all of the security vulnerabilities. If I need to transfer files, I "sneakernet" them across by using a flash drive. 

 

My laptop runs Windows 8.1 and it is regularly updated. I use that for online connectivity. Even so, when I am not actively using it, it is physically disconnected and offline. (I am not so much paranoid about security as I have a low data cap.)

 

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I do not update emulators unless I really need the bug fixes to correctly play certain games or if there's a feature I really like to have (such as RetroArch's auto-translate feature...which sadly broke the ability to use soft patches).

 

I only use certain versions of MAME to work with the rom sets I got from the Internet Archive and I can't use the recent version of Stella with Rocket Launcher, which itself is pretty old but still works for me.

 

LaunchBox though with the constant auto-updates is a PITA because it would slow or freeze the program while it's doing it and I wouldn't know about it till I get a pop-up.

 

With Windows 10 there's a difference between updating and upgrading...

 

Updating is with security patches every month on Patch Tuesday and should be done because...it's Windows.  You can turn it off by using a Metered Connection setting but I wouldn't recommend it unless you replace Windows Defender.

 

Upgrading is that semi-annual thing where they add "features" which may break your system if you're not careful.  You can delay those for up to a week or so, and that's recommended till they do fix bugs.  And ALWAYS do automatic backups of the ? Drive, even external drives are cheap now...

 

 

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I have a spare computer from 2002 with XP, which works surprisingly well, that I use once in a blue moon. I have turned settings down and use Opera for internet. It is a bit laggy, and I have a low tolerance for lagging, but people who are just looking for a computer to do the basic thing would find it satisfactory. The startup takes about 5 minutes, though. It has Avast Free Antivirus, and to my knowledge I haven´t had any spyware/viruses on it. If it wasn´t for the fact that internet-pages are so bloated these days, which makes surfing a bit too slow, it would still be my primary computer.

 

Hardware-updates:

I think they are a bitch. You have to spend a lot of time setting settings, learning how to use it, transfer stuff from your old thingy and there is always something about it, which is not as good as the previous one. So I upgrade as seldomly as possible. That saves money too. I was using a Nokia cell-phone up until a few years ago, and only switched to a smartphone because I needed to stream music on something portable.

 

Software-updates:

I don´t mind them if they happen automatically, improve the experience and do it when it is convenient. But they rarely meet all 3 of the criteria. The first time I used my smartphone to stream music from You Tube, the experience (after some setting changes) was perfect. Since then it has gradually gotten worse. Here are the features, which have disappeared over the years:

 

1) Seeing which song was next when set on shuffle (I always use shuffle). This one was the first to go. Initally it would say in the bottom right corner of the video which song was next. But then it would start to say the wrong song. Then it came back in the form that you could see what the shuffled playlist looked like. Now the situation is FUBAR (see point 3).

 

2) Seeing where you are in the playlist, so you can easily select a nearby song you feel like hearing. Now I have to keep the screen between the video and the top of the playlist, to be able to change to the next song, when I don´t want to hear the whole song.

 

3) Shuffle itself! It´s gone! Now I have to listen to songs in their playlist order like a caveman, or spend a lot of time manually selecting songs.

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On 4/30/2020 at 11:19 PM, Lord Mushroom said:

Software-updates:

I don´t mind them if they happen automatically, improve the experience and do it when it is convenient. But they rarely meet all 3 of the criteria. The first time I used my smartphone to stream music from You Tube, the experience (after some setting changes) was perfect. Since then it has gradually gotten worse. Here are the features, which have disappeared over the years:

 

YouTube sucks for music streaming aside from a couple songs at a time, you can't even run the app in the background w/o paying a subscription and they block all 3rd party apps that let you do that.  You're better off with something like Spotify.

 

That's another forced update that's a PITA...websites!  You can't do anything about that and can't even use alternative 3rd party apps (RIP MyTube...)

 

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No worries. Youtube is gonna continue on bigger and stronger than ever before.

 

Every website I've seen "modernized" has generally been for the worst. Harsher graphics and subtly disjointed formatting. Not fully compatible with desktop, but this isn't important as PC-based web browsing is 2nd fiddle to mobile.

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8 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

YouTube sucks for music streaming aside from a couple songs at a time, you can't even run the app in the background w/o paying a subscription and they block all 3rd party apps that let you do that.  You're better off with something like Spotify.

 

I don´t use the app. :) I use Google Chrome almost exclusively for You Tube, so when I open Chrome I am taken to where I left off on You Tube. I am not paying anything. I get ads, though, which I think there is a way around, but I don´t mind them much as I just press them away.

 

What is the smarthphone equivalent of "click" anyway? Press? Push? Touch?

 

I don´t like Spotify. I think their sound is inferior to You Tube somehow. It sounds dead. Of course, many songs on You Tube has poor quality. But most have one or more versions with high quality. You just have to look for them, which sometimes is time-consuming, if you are looking for an uncommon version of a song or something. And it is annoying as hell when the particular video of a song I am using is taken down, or when a video suddenly becomes unavailable to people in my country. But I still prefer You Tube over Spotify.

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On 4/28/2020 at 9:35 AM, INVISIBLE said:

Emulators have their uses, but constantly having to upgrade them can be a royal pain in the ashtakasha.  Software, firmware on your classic gear, main computer or even cellphone, it seems like it's freaking endless.  Hence, the question of the poll....

 

 

Don't use their euphemisms.  It's never an "upgrade" and it usually breaks stuff that was working fine.  It's always bigger and slower than the last version while sucking up ever more computing resources!

 

I really wish websites and phone manufacturers could get together and agree on a standard and then don't change it. You can do this in such a way that the format can be expanded while maintaining backwards compatibility.  WTF do I need the latest iphone or android to check the friggin weather that worked 6 months ago?  I am now the proud owner of a bunch of devices that can no longer do the things they did right out of the box!  Now that's an UPGRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

ALL of this incompatibility and slowing down your device is ENTIRELY because they are tracking you and stealing your data. Eff them. I stopped carrying a phone over 5 years ago. Never been happier than since before I got the thing.

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On 5/2/2020 at 3:11 AM, MrMaddog said:

YouTube sucks for music streaming aside from a couple songs at a time, you can't even run the app in the background w/o paying a subscription and they block all 3rd party apps that let you do that.  You're better off with something like Spotify.

 

That's another forced update that's a PITA...websites!  You can't do anything about that and can't even use alternative 3rd party apps (RIP MyTube...)

 

 

No problems, use << THIS SCREEN GRABBER >> to copy anything on You Tube, NetFlix or whatever.  

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2 hours ago, christo930 said:

Don't use their euphemisms.  It's never an "upgrade" and it usually breaks stuff that was working fine.  It's always bigger and slower than the last version while sucking up ever more computing resources!

Absolutely correct. I avoid so-called upgrades whenever possible. Not out of resistance to change, but for fear of losing versatility and functionality. I went back to using XP as my main workhorse when I couldn't do what I wanted to do efficiently with Windows10. I'll periodically "check in on" Windows10 from time to time to see if it has improved. But my hopes aren't too high. Too bad I had to relegate some nice hardware to second fiddle. But. UPGRADES! Fuck'em all..

 

2 hours ago, christo930 said:

I really wish websites and phone manufacturers could get together and agree on a standard and then don't change it. You can do this in such a way that the format can be expanded while maintaining backwards compatibility.

Blame it on marketing, the need for busywork, and asinine developers that think they know better. In fact we'd be better off without without half the crap we have today.

 

There's this weird blind push to keep minimizing functionality of GUIs, and hiding of all things technical. Well as far as I'm concerned they can go hide themselves away. I'm not interested.

 

2 hours ago, christo930 said:

  WTF do I need the latest iphone or android to check the friggin weather that worked 6 months ago?  I am now the proud owner of a bunch of devices that can no longer do the things they did right out of the box!  Now that's an UPGRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You don't. And neither do I. I try to upgrade minimally.

 

2 hours ago, christo930 said:

ALL of this incompatibility and slowing down your device is ENTIRELY because they are tracking you and stealing your data. Eff them. I stopped carrying a phone over 5 years ago. Never been happier than since before I got the thing.

Tracking, partially. More of the need to control the information being fed to you. All in attempt to engage you more in "clicking" and sending your dollars to "them". Nothing more.

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2 hours ago, Keatah said:

Absolutely correct. I avoid so-called upgrades whenever possible. Tracking, partially. More of the need to control the information being fed to you. All in attempt to engage you more in "clicking" and sending your dollars to "them". Nothing more.

Surveillance capitalism. It's practically the only way any tech company makes money now.

 

Hey wiretap! Give me a recipe for pancakes!

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