Should you upgrade?

With Christmas and the New Year rapidly approaching, it is the season for spending and thoughts of treating yourself may have crossed your mind. Should you upgrade your software to the latest version? Perhaps there is a new release of some application that you use and it looks very tempting. Maybe the software you are currently using is now getting quite old and needs a refresh. The same is true of hardware too and there are lots of shiny new computers and gadgets sporting the latest technology to choose from, so is it time to upgrade? My philosophy has always been to skip a version, so for some people the answer is yes, upgrade now, but the advice is to wait for the next version whenever that may be,

Take Windows for example. Windows 98 was a great operating system and it was very popular. Then along came Windows ME (Millenium Edition), which wasn't so popular. You should have skipped it and waited for the next version, which was Windows XP - another great operating system. Vista, which came after it wasn't so hot (although it was unfairly criticised), and you should have skipped it and then upgraded to Windows 7. This is another first class operating system.

The same is true of other software products too and with new Linux distros appearing twice a year in some cases, you should skip a version and not accept every update as soon as it is released. Ubuntu 10.04 is fine if you've applied all the updates and 10.10 doesn't bring that many benefits. You should wait for 11.04 at least before upgrading.

OS X is slightly different either and Tiger to Leopard was a useful upgrade, but Leopard to Snow Leopard was more of a service pack. However, it was dirt cheap so there wasn't actually any reason to avoid it in this case, but if it had been full priced, then it would have been best to skip it and wait for the next version, Lion, which is under development.

Applications are similar and upgrading from v3 to v4 of some program may not always bring many benefits and sometimes you just get a few tweaks and a few new features. Skipping a version and waiting for v5 brings many more benefits.

You can upgrade the hardware every year if you want to constantly be at the cutting edge of technology, but you see a huge difference in performance unless there is a new generation of processor, such as Intel Core 2 Duo to Core i7/i5/i3. Don't be in too much of a hurry to upgrade, wait until there is a significant benefit, and then go for it.