Number 237 - February 2003

Software Upgrades Mind That Patch
by Timothy Everingham
You hear that there is a minor upgrade, a service pack, or a patch for software on your computer. It is recommended by the manufacturer for you to install it. Should you? Just because a software company says you should is not a valid enough reason to do it. A worldwide fast food franchise sent out a minor upgrade to the software running on the servers in their Southern California stores. They just sent out the software to the managers with detailed instructions on how and when to install it. This minor upgrade froze all systems connected to the server, including the cash registers, in all their Southern California stores right after installation and all on the same day. I was in one of their stores the day this happened. They had confused employees trying to replace cash registers with prices programmed in and which automatically send orders to video screens with calculators, paper, and sometimes employees shouting to each other. This caused some long lines, resulting in some customers deciding to eat someplace else. The company had to send a technician to every store to get the stores back up and running. There have been free upgrades to Microsoft Office and NT Servers which were such disasters that they had to be pulled quickly from being distributed to be reworked, then reissued telling everyone who had upgraded to upgrade again. Those who waited until the fixed upgrades came out rather than using the original ones avoided some severe problems.    There is an old phrase "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." If your software is running correctly be slower to upgrade. If it does not have any new features you want, you need to be even slower. Ask around and find what other people's experience is with the upgrade.    There are also some websites that report on this, such as Woody's Watch (www.woodyswatch.com), which reports on Microsoft's Windows, Office, Access, and Project and Palm PDAs, and Mac Fix It (www.macfixit.com) for things Mac. Also check out CNET (www.cnet.com) and ZDNet (www.zdnet.com) too. If the patch or upgrade has been out for a while and you only hear good things about it, you are safer in going ahead and doing the upgrade. Be sure that system requirements for the patch, service pack or upgrade are met. Be aware that sometimes you may have to upgrade other software before you upgrade the software you wish to upgrade. An example of this is if you wish to upgrade the driver for your video card on a Windows system you may have to first upgrade Microsoft's DirectX. Check the upgrade's release notes for known problems or conflicts with other software and hardware. To be on totally on the safe side you need to have backed up your computer recently and have the installation disks and codes of all your software on that machine. Some software	allows you to take a system snapshot, such as included with Windows XP, which can be sufficient in many instances, but not always.    A recent viewer of TechTV's The Screen Savers sent in "The only time computer security becomes a problem is when you think you have it." As such, security patches are a different category. You may think you computer software is secure, but most people do not do the testing required to really find out. A firewall is good, but relying only on that is questionable. A layered defense is better. That includes installing security patches on all of your software. So taking less time to wait to install is probably warranted. However, bad things can happen. I have Microsoft critical update alert (free service from Microsoft) on a computer running Windows. An alert popped up saying that there was a new security patch for my Windows Media Player. I installed the patch. However, I was running a three year old version of Qualcomm's Eudora Pro e-mail program on the computer, and now the program would crash when I started it. I wound up fixing the problem by upgrading the e-mail program.    Another issue is to only get patches, service packs, and upgrades from trusted sources. Get them from the manufacturer or places that are well known and trusted. There have been e-mail scams that advise people to install a patch either attached to an e-mail or a link from that e-mail to a website that is not the manufacture's or a known and trusted site. Those patches contained viruses or Trojan horse programs. Even if someone you know sends you a patch, be cautious. It may not be them sending you the patch (they spoofed your friend's e-mail address) or someone may have fooled your friend already. You do not want to be in the position of trying to improve your software, but instead all of the people in your e-mail address book are sent a virus or put on more spam lists, your computer being enlisted in the army of someone doing denial of service attacks on websites, or your hard drive being erased.    So be cautious before installing that patch, service pack or upgrade. Just don't only rely on the manufacture's advice to do it. Also watch where you get it. "Mind That Patch" means using your mind before installing that patch.    Timothy Everingham is CEO of Timothy Everingham Consulting in Azusa, California. In addition he is the Vice President of the Windows Media Users' Group of Los Angeles. He is also part-time press in the areas of high technology, video, audio, and entertainment/media and has had articles published throughout the United States and Canada. He is a member of TUGNET. Further information can be found at home.earthlink.net/~teveringham
Number 237 - February 2003