The Cost Of Windows Updates For Developers And Users

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.

There’s no easy solution here, Microsoft charge a hefty fee for their operating systems and that means people aren’t going to rush out to upgrade. Apple have long taken a different approach and have long had low cost operating systems and as I said earlier, Mavericks was free.

Developers must find this situation painful, although not many will admit it. They get support calls that they know could be reduced if people would upgrade their operating systems and yet the reality is that plenty of people will simply refuse to pay 100 quid for an upgrade that then involves a hefty download and a what they perceive as a complicated procedure of backing up data.

So whereas the advice is technically good, in practical terms it’s not going to have much of an impact due to the price and complexity of a Windows upgrade.

Mac users really have a lot less excuses and should be far easier to reach in terms of being encouraged to upgrade their operating system.

Obviously I’d be a lot happier if Microsoft would follow the Mac path and make their operating systems no or low cost but that’s not Microsoft’s business model. I’m not having a pop at Microsoft here, they do what they need to do and it has been a successful model for them. There are things I am prepared to have a pop at Microsoft over, Office 2013 and the absurd lack of colour schemes being one, but that’s a different rant for a different day.

However in terms of developers advancing their software and reducing support calls, the hurdles put in front of end users make this a difficult sell. I don’t really know what the best answer is here, but there will remain a gap between where developers would like people to head and where people actually will head. In the future it may be different, but for now, devs and end users both need patience.

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