upgrade

Altec Lansing aims headphones at upgraders

Most portable audio and video players come bundled with average, if not, crappy earphones. The sad part is that a lot of people don't seem bothered by the poor sound quality, or aren't even aware of it.

Altec Lansing claims its Upgrader series of headphones targets music listeners dissatisfied with the earbuds included with their players and are looking to "upgrade" to better sound quality. To cater to different preferences, the Upgrader series is split into three main categories: inEar, onEar, and overEar.

The inEar offerings (UHP306, UHP336, UHP101, and UHP301) feature the SnugFit design that … Read more

6 upgrades that are downgrades

I like new tech. That's one of the reasons I do this job. But there are times when newest is not bestest, when in fact we're better off using old products.

It shouldn't be like this. Technology and engineers' capabilities are advancing so fast right now that everything that is good about a current product can, in theory, easily be built into its successors. But sometimes this doesn't happen. Here are a few choice examples of upgrades that are downgrades, and why you're better off with the older tech:

Vista

The obvious number one product for this list. Vista is the new shiny operating system Microsoft released to replace Windows XP. Except it hasn't, because it's a poor upgrade. It's slower, bigger, and buggier. Many people, not just those in the opportunistic Apple ads (and Apple has its own problems), would rather get a new computer with the old XP operating system.

Why it happened: Books will be written about Vista's failures, which, in fairness, probably have as much to do with Microsoft's need to support a vast universe of third-party hardware and software products as with flaws in Microsoft's marketing and software development strategy.

Quicken

Intuit apparently believes that new users won't buy a personal accounting product if it's last year's model, and it also wants to upgrade its current users each year. So it "sunsets" older versions after three years: it turns off online access to bank updates and eliminates support. Sadly, some older versions of Quicken are faster and more stable than the new versions. But if you're a Quicken user, you can't stick with "classic" versions without giving up useful online features.

Why it continues to happen: Intuit has locked itself into a yearly upgrade cycle on a product that clearly takes more than a year to update.

Linksys WRT54G

The old WRT54G wireless router was a reliable and economical product, but a few years ago Linksys released a version 5 of the product that they knew was buggier. Knowledgeable users were able to get the older version by shopping online for the special "WRT54GL" router, which was really the previous version. It cost a few extra bucks, but it was a far better value.

Why it happened: Cost cutting, pure and simple. I covered this in 2006.

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Photoshop Elements could be more basic

Photoshop Elements 6 is a good tool for those addicted to Adobe. It streamlines Photoshop's toolset for photograph editing and organizing, but like its antecedent, it's got some unwieldy bulk and it could be simplified even further. Is it worth upgrading?

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Apple acknowledges some Leopard installation problems

Apple posted a support document over the weekend on its Web site addressing reports of interminable "blue screen" problems that caused some Mac users upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard no small degree of frustration.

Some attempts to upgrade to Leopard were stymied after the installation process was almost complete and users attempted to restart their machines. A long thread on Apple's discussion forums outlined the problems, in which their Macs would get hung up on the initial boot screen. That screen happens to be blue, inviting comparisons to the infamous Windows "blue screen of death" … Read more

Enterprise software: customers upgrading at a snail's pace

Oracle owns the database world. And this may be precisely its biggest problem.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, customers aren't planning to snap up its newest version of its industry-leading database, 11g. The reason? Oracle is improving its database at a much slower pace, providing fewer reasons to upgrade:

[I]t typically takes at least several months for a company to fully shift to a new version of Oracle's database software -- the larger the company, the longer it takes -- and lately Oracle has made several small, incremental changes in new releases rather than a few large, important ones that would compel a company to switch quickly, customers say....… Read more

Facebook creates online focus group for new features

Facebook has a new group called Facebook Sneak Preview that is the social-networking equivalent of a focus group. The Facebook team will be showing off screenshots of upcoming Facebook features to get feedback to potentially avoid another user backlash like the one that came with the news feed privacy hullabaloo of 2006.

Right now there are three screenshots showcasing an updated layout with less clutter and more commonly used navigation put in the right places. One change in particular shows the networks selection option and the message in-box in a tabbed menu bar at the top of the screen. Normally if you're a member of multiple networks, you have to select between them halfway down your profile. Putting that and your message in-box on the top is just a good idea. There are other little tweaks, but it's good to see them taking an active approach to making the site more user-friendly.

Not new--but cool nonetheless--is the option to comment on each screenshot, allowing users to add their opinions on the changes. The same goes for a general forum on the main page of the group, which is currently being moderated by Facebook staff to keep conversation on-topic. We've got all three screens below.

[via Facebook Blog]… Read more

Sony updates PS3 firmware to fix bugs and add features

I woke up this morning and clicked on the System Update icon on my PS3 and lo and behold, the rumored 1.5 firmware update was available for download. Unfortunately, Sony doesn't offer a change log saying exactly what the firmware update does, but there are plenty of tidbits out there on blogs from PS3 enthusiasts.

The biggest issue that the update fixes involves backward-compatibility with PSOne and PS2 titles, some of which looked like garbage on HDTVs when played on the PS3. Titles that didn't support 480p output exhibited loads of artifacts and jaggies. Allegedly, all that'… Read more