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Choosing to Skip the Upgrade and Care for the Gadget You've Got (nytimes.com)
The New York Times has run a piece on its "Tech Fix" section, in which it argues, citing a user's experience, why skipping an upgrade might not be a bad idea, and how you could hold on to your existing device for a little longer. The story revolves around Vincent Lai, who dug up a Palm Treo, a smartphone that was disconnected last decade, and found that with little tweaks, the phone still had some life in it. From the article: Mr. Lai's behavior might be extreme, but his experience with the Palm Treo illustrates there is another way: If you simply put some maintenance into electronics as you would a car, you can stay happy with your gadgets for years. It is part of a movement of anti-consumerism, or the notion of cherishing what you have rather than incessantly buying new stuff. Signs of this philosophy are spreading: Industry data suggests that consumers are waiting longer to upgrade to new phones than they have in the past. [...] When smartphones and tablets were fairly sluggish and limited in abilities compared with computers, there was a compelling reason to buy a new mobile device every few years. But now the mobile gadgets have become so fast and capable that you can easily keep them much longer. "A five-year-old computer is still completely fine now," Mr. Wiens said. "We're starting to hit that same plateau with phones now."The article also shares some tips such as clearing up storage and getting your device's battery replaced -- which costs roughly $20 to $40 -- that can help you get the max out of your phone and tablet. There's one more aspect, which the aforementioned article doesn't talk about. If you have an old iDevice -- iPhone or iPad -- upgrading to the latest available version of the operating system could substantially slow it up. Not upgrading, however, exposes your device to a range of security attacks. It's a tough choice.
The problem isn't often the hardware, but the software. Maintaining old gadgets should be OK if you're willing to stay away from walled-gardens or jail-break your device. This post is probably a testament that we should, in fact be doing one of those, or opt for open systems. In other words, you must also choose a device that CAN be maintained easily.
I have a first-generation iPad and it technically works fine. The battery still lasts long enough for it to be useful, and the device is in near-new shape. However, because it's no longer supported, it's becoming more and more useless for the following reasons:
1) New apps can no longer be installed because even the most trivial programs are written with libraries only supported by a recent OS version, which the device does not support.
2) Most currently installed apps can no longer be upgraded for the same reason as above. Those that can be upgraded often have bugs, leaving the user with a broken app, as there's no easy way to revert.
3) Existing apps that worked great yesterday start to require more memory, and begin to crash more and more often. If the app uses an external service, this can start happening even if the app was never upgraded.
PCs are a little easier. My last PC was a decade old before I stopped using it as my main machine. My current one is six years old and going strong.
What better logo for an article about maintaining legacy hardware in production?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>> upgrading to the latest available version of the operating system could substantially slow it up. Not upgrading, however, exposes your device to a range of security attacks. It's a tough choice.
Hey, if you want to avoid the dilemma, just become an Android user, where the tradeoff has already been decided for you: you'll almost NEVER be able to upgrade!
What about software fixes for security bugs?
What I'm about to say will be considered heresy, but...
Given that most Android phone OSes do not receive updates of any kind (let alone security fixes), well, what's the problem? I say that mostly in jest, mind you, but the vast majority of Android phones out there, even 4-year-old ancient critters, are most likely going to remain unexploited and untouched for as long as they are capable of running. Most users don't stray from the Play Store, they don't really add anything that they don't already know and trust, and to be honest, they will never see a problem as long as they don't sideload iffy crap off of Russian servers or suchlike.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Don't plug USB mice into a port on the same host controller as your USB audio. Don't plug USB audio devices into a USB 3 port with a hard drive hanging off of it.
USB audio really needs USB 2.0 speeds to be usable. And not just bandwidth, but actual timing. It needs a certain amount of bus time per second, the bandwidth requirement is actually pretty paltry (low-end for USB 2, but more than USB 1.1 could handle). USB doesn't have an isochronous transfer mode like Firewire or Thunderbolt.
And USB 3.x bus controllers make this effect even worse by shoving USB 2 and USB 1.x devices both into the same "emulated mode", whereas USB 2 controllers only relegated USB 1.x devices to emulated mode. The emulated mode is essentially a workaround for the lack of isochronous transfer by taking a single, wider bus-time slice and allowing older devices to all take their own smaller time slice out of it, but stacking them up to use the bandwidth as much as possible. But then certain devices don't play nice with the clocking on this, and all hell breaks loose. That's what's causing the stutter/jitter issues in your undoubtedly USB 2 device connected to your very-likely USB 3 bus controller.