Upgrading By Downgrading

As much as I pine for some of the parts of my childhood (cartoons were clearly better when I was growing up), I will admit that we have it pretty good today. I wish I could have grown up with some of the stuff my nieces have (specifically MP3 players). Yep, technology is always moving forward. Which is why it is always extra disappointing to discover that your new and improved toy is new, but not really improved. This is especially true when it comes to personal items. It can be very discouraging to discover that while your cell phone is new and shiny, it isn't particularly good at doing basic things like making calls. And because we are all so tied in to our computer these days, when an upgrade fails to improve its performance we take it especially hard.

Like everyone else, I'm constantly asked by one system or another to install some program upgrade, which will fix all the problems caused by the previous program upgrade. Because I assume these companies are not full of liars, I typically approve their request, which takes forever and then when it is finally over I can not tell if a single thing has changed. In fact, usually the only way I can tell that an upgrade has taken place is because I suddenly have to enter in a password that I haven't had to remember for months to start a program. But, as long as everything else is smooth sailing I'm willing to roll with it.

This has not been the case recently. A few months back I accepted the free upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. It promised to be the fastest Internet browser I have ever had and for a week that was true. But, the problem with technology companies today is that their programmers are working off mega-computers with 800 gigabytes of memory and therefore never worry about trivial things like 'disk space'. So, after a couple of weeks my computer stopped being so fast and was back to its pre-upgrade speed, which I could have lived with. The real issue started when the browser was taking up so much virtual memory it started slowing down everything else. I have a virus scan program on my computer which used to take 4 hours to do a total sweep and was now taking 20 while simultaneously making my computer a really nice paperweight.

Then the Internet browser itself started to become brutally slow, which basically defeated the purpose of the upgrade to begin with. I would double-click on the icon, then have enough time to go make myself a sandwich, take a shower, read most of "War and Peace" and by the time I returned my homepage was just about ready to appear on my screen. I had spent the last few months trying all sorts of tricks to make my computer faster: deleting old programs and repeated files, all in the name of just getting back to where I was. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to remove the upgrade which had started all the problems in the first place.

A day later things were a little faster, but still slower than before. At that point I cut my losses and switched browsers completely. I can not tell you how frustrated it makes me to have to go back to a previous version of something to improve performance. Frankly, everyone who worked on IE8 should be embarrassed. I don't care that the upgrade was free, it still carries your company's name. Could you imagine how bad it would be for Apple if iTunes operated so slowly that people once again thought CDs were the best way to listen to music? (I mean, I would have to explain to the kids today what they are, but after that...) I understand that sometimes in life you have to take a step back to take two steps forward, but when it comes to programming, taking a step back is just going to get you run over.