Stability and the Unchanged Desktop
Posted on March 13th, 2006
Lately the volume settings on my computer haven't been staying where I leave them. And most of the icons in the system tray seem to have vanished. I think it's a case of software rot. The software in question is Windows.
I bet if I wiped everything out and started over from scratch, I'd regain stable sound and all those phantom system tray icons would be back in line in no time. It would only take... well, a couple hours at least. Not exciting. Not my idea of a good time at all.
The problem is that Windows as well as most other operating systems keep changing. Software updates mean well. They fix problems and increase security and sometimes add new features and functionality. But particularly in the case of Windows, they also raise the prospect that something that was working fine yesterday may not still be working fine tomorrow. It can be a small one or a huge one, but it's still a maybe.
Ask anyone and they'll tell you that you'd be crazy to forgo software updates. And in a majority of cases that's true. But it's also true that troubleshooting odd computer behavior is a pain in the ass. With a reasonable number of precautions in place you can protect your home network fiefdom from the rats and rogues at large. Security by itself isn't enough reason to follow conventional wisdom.
A while back I uninstalled the free antivirus software that had been a fixture for several years. Since then, the computer has yet to blow up. On one hand I'm probably less safe than I was before, but on the other hand I'm not bothered by daily accountings of virus files being updated successfully (or not). It's one less thing to keep tabs on. It's more convenient.
An operating system that hardly ever changes has a lot of appeal to me. Never changing is impractical. But so is checking for updates every day or week, and installing them as soon as they become available. Likewise for letting the updates happen behind the scenes without any awareness afterwards of what has changed.
In an environment where someone has to be responsible for the smooth running of a large number of machines, policies should be different than they are when you're at home. At home you probably have your own computer. At work you're just a hotel guest. As long as you're not cruising shady websites or engaging in other unsafe computer-related activities, you should be able to place convenience ahead of everything else. In some cases-- obviously not all of course-- the most convenient computer can be one that works as well today as it did when you first took it out of the box.