Making sure to update your O.S.

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

It happens, once in a while. You see a notification to update and you have no choice but to do it. It is time to update or patch your operating system. Although sometimes we like to keep our systems the same exact way there are times where you must consider the benefit vs costs and debate with yourself whether an update for your system is actually good or bad.

Here’s a list of some of the reasons you may or may not want to immediately update.

Pros of updating means that:

• It can patch your system
• Offer refreshed newer interfaces
• Fix some bugs
• Update security
• Prevent some malware or viruses

Cons:

• May introduce a new bugs
• May have strange behavior
• May add new features you didn’t want before including privacy invading features including large advertisements
• Can be large in size and take up storage space of which you might not have
• May cause certain crashes
• May cause interactions with other software or cause another piece of software to not be able to be used or create obsolete features
• May pop up annoying nag features or add new features that you can no longer turn off or create a time limite trial or be Internet-only/ cloud-only meaning you don’t have control over the software any longer.

Before you update a system:

• Consider if it’s worth it. Sometimes you can postpone updates and upgrades if the benefits vs cost trade off is too costly or there are too many cons.
• Clean up hard drive space as you may well need more space to download the new files and expand files or extract them.
• Back up essential files and passwords and set ups. Consider having a paper or non-electronic storage system also. Sometimes the best system is an old fashioned system that has worked for a long time.

Consider free and open source software options as well. If you can try running your needed software in an emulator or virtual machine.