Oz Linden’s recent blog post on Tips for Reducing Viewer Crashes urged people to upgrade their operating systems :
Upgrade your Operating System
There is a very clear pattern in our statistics – the more up to date your operating system is, the less likely your Viewer is to crash. This applies on both Windows and Macintosh (Linux is a little harder to judge, since “up to date” has a more fluid meaning there, and the sample sizes are small). Some examples:
- Windows 8.1 reports crashes only half as often as Windows 8.0
Those of you who stuck with Windows 7 (roughly 40% of users of our Viewer right now) rather than upgrade to 8.0 made a good choice at the time; version 7 still has a much better crash rate than 8.0, but not quite as good as 8.1 (now about 15% of users), so waiting is no longer the best approach.
- Mac OSX 10.9.3 reports crashes a third less than 10.7.5
OSX rates do not have as much variation as Windows versions do, but newer is still better, and there are other non-crash reasons to be on the up to date version, including rendering improvements.
Upgrading will probably also better protect you from security problems, so it’s a good idea even aside from allowing you to spend more time in Second Life.
However there’s a massive elephant in the room here and it’s the cost of upgrading Windows. OSX is a different kettle of fish and the recent Mavericks OS was even free. Microsoft Windows is different and this highlights an issue for developers as well as end users.
Here in the UK, Windows 8 upgrade for Vista and XP users is £99.99. The upgrade to Windows 8.1 after that is free.
Windows 8.1 itself, which is the path Windows 7 users will likely want to tread, is also £99.99. These are hefty fees in all reality and a lot of people would rather wait until their computer reaches the end of its life before upgrading.
Continue reading “The Cost Of Windows Updates For Developers And Users”