Star letter

I’ve both heard (on the PC Pro podcast) and read

(in the magazine) reminders recently about the importance of keeping software up to date, and it finally shamed me into sitting down and looking at a couple of updates that I’ve put off for a while now. I got as far as the “Confirm purchase” button but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

My problem is that my setup as it is now works, and works perfectly, but I have experience time and again of doing updates “for security” and key software or hardware immediately stopping working. From a Windows 10 update that stopped my spirometers working (this meant I lost income until I could find a fix… and then Windows decided to push out another update, which did it again!) to updating individual programs causing instability and again preventing me from working, everything was absolutely fine before updating. Even on the smaller “trivial” side, Office managed to roll out an update that killed my label printer’s integration with Outlook. This didn’t seem like a major deal – until I had around 600 letters that needed sending and had to waste the best part of a day to get it working again.

The problem is the balance versus risk equation. If I don’t update, I may be at increased security risk, meaning that while the consequences could be high, the likelihood of a problem in reality is tiny. Meanwhile, if I do update regularly, I’m adversely impacted: the likelihood of a problem is high and, as I’m self-employed, that has immediate financial consequences. The risk versus cost balance is completely weighted towards “if it’s working, leave it alone”.

Software manufacturers need to get their development systems back under control and stop rolling out half-baked “we’ll fix any problems later” updates. I have my IT setup first and foremost to earn money in my job, and while out-of-date software is a risk, that risk is dwarfed by the impact of shoddy updates. Adam Jackson