October 12, 2001

The cutting edge: Should you upgrade?

Edi­tors note: This is one of sev­eral columns that I wrote for the Colum­bia Mis­sourian. They were orig­i­nally called Your Dig­i­tal World

In a little less than a month’s time, two new ver­sions of oper­at­ing sys­tems will have been released. Apple shipped OS 10.1 on Sept. 29, and Microsoft is expected to launch Win­dows XP on Oct. 25.

Any­time there is a sub­stan­tial new oper­at­ing system released, or a new piece of tech­nol­ogy put on the market, many people ask them­selves, “Do I need to upgrade?”

If you ask people in the indus­try, they’ll tell you yes.

Of course they will, just like I’d tell you to sub­scribe to the Colum­bia Mis­sourian. They and I have a vested inter­est in get­ting you to buy our products.

So what’s the best answer? It’s up to you.

The deci­sion about whether to upgrade will depend on whether your system is per­form­ing the way you want it to.

Take, for exam­ple, my par­ents. They recently bought a new com­puter. Before that, they had the same com­puter they bought in 1993. They used it to receive faxes and to run Word Per­fect 6.0. Now, being a speed freak, tin­kerer, and game-​a-​holic, I was never happy with it when I lived at home. But for my par­ents, it was a match made in heaven. My par­ents only upgraded when the com­puter stopped doing what they needed it to do – namely boot-​up properly.

Most gen­eral users will find they don’t need to upgrade all that often.

Find out if the new fea­tures of the latest soft­ware or hard­ware are what you need – if not, stick with what works for you.

For graph­ics pro­fes­sion­als and gamers, find out what soft­ware you need first. The latest graphic design pro­gram or newest game will often require more hard­ware than what you have. If you need the soft­ware, you’ll have to get the hard­ware it needs.

For every­one, be wary of new oper­at­ing sys­tems – they often won’t run, or smoothly run, the pro­grams you already have. Check and double-​check com­pat­i­bil­ity and per­for­mance issues before taking the upgrade plunge.

When con­sid­er­ing an upgrade, see if a new ver­sion of what you want is about to come out. Wait for it, grab what you need as its price falls, and you’ll get the best byte for a buck, every time.

Don’t ever upgrade on a whim or an impulse. Buying any piece of hard­ware or soft­ware is a big invest­ment in time, energy and money.

There is a wealth of infor­ma­tion about almost every con­ceiv­able prod­uct on the Inter­net. Research your poten­tial pur­chase thor­oughly before­hand. Check out the manufacturer’s Web site, but also head to Cnet.com, Mac​world.com and other sites that review hard­ware and soft­ware. When in doubt, ask your local geek, or com­puter colum­nist. Your goal should be to know more about the prod­uct than the guy trying to sell it to you. When you’re done, ask your­self: Is this a prod­uct I need, at the time I need it, at the price I want to pay for it?

Filed under: Technology

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