One of the hassles of having lots of apps available for your computers, tablets and phones is keeping all that software up to date. While some apps can keep themselves updated, many of them require your manual input. Do you keep up with the latest updates?
Picture: Lee Bennett/Flickr
Some devices are easier to keep updated than others. On the computer side of things, operating systems can update themselves automatically, as can some programs. But some programs don’t, leaving you with the job of checking for updates yourself or installing third-party tools to help you out.
Phones and tablets typically give you the option to update all your apps and your system software at once. But even then there are times when an update might break functionality. Obviously, it depends somewhat on the device you’re updating, but do you keep up with updates? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Comments
6 responses to “Do You Keep Your Software Updated?”
Lol – Netscape navigator… Haven’t seen that in years!
Generally i update my software if its doesn’t effect what ever im doing at the time… 🙂
I always turn on automatic update checking if the option is there. I won’t let anything install the update automatically though, especially on my mobile devices due to my 3G usage being a lot more expensive than my home ADSL. Even when on my ADSL connection though, where I never exceed my quota, I find it annoying if an app updates when I’m trying to use it so I prefer if it notifies me and lets me install it when I’m ready.
If there is no automatic updating though, then I’ll rarely check for updates. I will only check if I’m installing it on a new machine, or if there’s a problem with the app I’m trying to fix, or I happen to hear about an update.
I keep automatic updating turned on. What I haven’t worked out yet, and would really like to be able to do, is to have something like an RSS feed of “What’s New” delivered to the phone that lists the changes/improvements made. When half a dozen apps update, it gets time-consuming going through each one to find out what’s happened.
Generally auto-update, once a month or so I run Secunia PSI to see what needs updating.
Everything except Java.
I’m anal about updates, I always want the latest and greatest. Even if it breaks something in the short-term, I’m happy to stick with it until whatever was broken gets updated to suit.
(Generally talking in smartphone terms here but it also applies to software/drivers).
Disregard the above if it is a full-blown loss of necessary functionality however, I think I have only had to rollback to previous versions on only a couple of occasions though (and it always irked me!)
My pet hate is using other people’s computers/devices and seeing ancient versions of software – so annoying!