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Firefox Users Stay Ahead On the Update Curve
Reader Alex links to news of a study comparing the currency and patch level of various Web browsers, excerpting:
"Firefox users were far and away the most likely to use the latest version, with an overwhelming 83.3 percent running an updated browser on any given day. However, despite Firefox's single click integrate auto-update functionality, 16.7 percent of Firefox users still continue to access the Web with an outdated version of the browser, researchers said. The study also revealed that the majority of Safari users (65.3) percent were likely to use the latest version of the browser between December 2007 and June 2008, after Safari version 3 became available. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Internet Explorer users ranked last in terms of safe browsing. Between January 2007 and June 2008, less than half of IE users — 47.6 percent — were running the most secure browser version during the same time period."
If I spend all my time keeping up with upgrades, I won't have any time left to actually use my damn computer. And sometimes an older version works better for me. All that automatic crap is turned off. My disks are backed up...I think... I'll upgrade if something breaks. I hope you're ok with that.
What?
An organization affiliated with ours has some web apps that only work with IE6, so I leave that on most machines in our department. It was over a year after IE6 came out before they supported that, so I figure it is a matter of time before they support IE7...probably when IE8 comes out. Many of the users in my department wouldn't know what their default browser is if I asked them. They would say it's, "the Internet". All they know is whether it works or not. If it works, that's all that matters.
FWIW, this type of situation might be one of the (many) reasons why Vista hasn't been widely deployed in enterprise (not as widely as XP, anyway). I don't think IE6 is available for Vista, so apps that don't work with IE7 would give some companies yet another reason to think about holding off on deploying Vista.
If users are asked to upgrade their software shortly after they've launched it, it's firstly an annoyance, but secondly it means that the software they don't launch regularly won't get updated regularly, and other software which might need to interoperate will fall out of sync with the new version.
Perhaps it's time to define a standard package manager API (not a standard package manager, just an API available in all major languages), before we get a culture where every piece of software manages its own updates interactively?
Web developers heed my call. Stop making websites accept security corrupting browsers because half the time they are pry zombies. Look at your logs and see the rate at which these computers increase revenue. Drop them at whatever delta you think prudent.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
When Mozilla sends out a buggy update, which has happened twice to my memory, a) it doesn't cripple the entire system, and b) there's a new version the next day. This goes back to my personal definition of trust: I don't necessarily expect a software vendor to be perfect 100% of the time. That's unrealistic. But I expect mistakes to be infrequent, non-severe, and for them to correct them quickly so that I'm not inconvenienced too much.
OTOH when Microsoft sends out a buggy update you have to keep your fingers crossed for something to be available in a few weeks. I don't want to come across as anti-Microsoft, but realistically that's the difference between the two in my experience.
There is an option in the group policy manager you can apply locally by running gpedit.