When upgrades don't improve the outcome

Most of the time we are all waiting for upgrades and updates and are all getting excited when a new version of our favourite prog is being released. Leaving aside the need to update due to security issues, sometimes new versions are just not better than what you had before.

I have been using Copernic Desktop for several years and was always happy with the program. Over the last upgrade I already noticed some functions did not work as expected (setting date ranges). When I downloaded the latest upgrade, I realised that the version did not provide any benefits to me at all but existing features have been taken away from the free version and are only availalbe in prof. versions. It also seemed that the latest version is sluggish, so I quickly got rid of it. After a quick trial of some alternatives, I just went back to an old version of Copernic (a few years old). While this may not be the perfect program for everyone, it fits my needs - it's fast, can index across a network and runs light.

Sometimes it's true: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

Haha, totally right! Best example Acronis TI7 versus Acronis TI8. TI8 lost some abilities and creates more errors then TI7, incredible that they dare to promote this software on actual computer magazines. Ti7 is really better even if both versions are totally outdated it is a good example of what you said.

The next crucial example: Explorer.exe Windows XP vs Explorer.exe Windows Vista (default columns are a total flop)
Ghastly this new explorer totally misconfigured. I really wonder who recoded this ..... it is so dumb to only rely columns on multimedia there you can see the shallow taste of commercial gruesomeness.

 

My personal experience in 26 years of using desktop PCs for practical
business and personal tasks has taught me never to upgrade software
that is securely doing the job I need done.

 

the best example that i have come accross recently is office 2007 at college.
during the summer my college reinstalled all the desktops. well reinstalled one and deployed images for the rest.
office 2007 is bacially the same as 2003 but with a different "prettier" interface. it has a few nice things but not worth the cost.
even on the fresh installations of XP on some computers power point wont work and on others access crashs on exit.

 

Thats why I stayed with Windows 2000 until XP SP2 came out, as it did'nt improve anything that I used - the existing setup was stable and cause no problems, so had no need to change.

I still use diskeeper 10 because newer versions do not suit my workstations usage patterns.
Still using Office 2003, Win XP, Visual Studio 2005 even though we have licences to use newer versions - what tends to happen is that when something breaks (software or hardware) we install latest version at that time (apart from OS which is strictly controlled on our network).

Another thing to consider is not to get too many major versions behind, as upgrading can be problematic.

 

Sometimes an upgrade is so bad, you are driven elsewhere. I use and really like Acronis TI 9 Home. I purchased a new computer with Vista, which is not supported (at least not my configuration) by TI 9. TI 11 is such a disaster, I wound up with Shadow Protect, which is a great program by the way.

 

Another case with office too. 2003 runs perfect for my needs, when I tried 2007 it was as slow as hell and had nothing more important for me.

And what about PowerDVD. My version 5 works perfectly and occupies only 15MB of space. The latest version ( did whatever v5 did but slower, and the installer only was 116MB.

 

Hello,

I agree. If it works, don't mess it up.

For example, Acronis True Image 9 worked great on one of my machines 2 years ago, so why upgrade to 11 - on the same machine? The same goes for Sygate firewall, for example.

Some stuff needs updates - mainly bug fixes and such, but upgrades, not always needed.

Mrk