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Kate Gerwig, Editorial Director
the decision on if/when/how to upgrade needs to be rooted in a cost-benefit analysis. Given the limited useful life of any mobile devices -- such limitations being imposed by technological evolution and obsolescence, evolving applications and other usage requirements, and loss or damage -- any upgrade decision needs to be made carefully and with return on investment (ROI) in mind.
Keep in mind that upgrades are not always straightforward and that things do occasionally go horribly wrong. Especially with mobile devices, it is sometimes best to leave well enough alone and allow natural obsolescence to take its course.
To illustrate this point, let's start with notebooks. Most notebooks have very limited hardware upgrade possibilities to begin with, those being confined to:
- new external add-ons, such as PC cards, ExpressCards, and USB and FireWire peripherals
- memory upgrades
- internal wireless upgrades
- hard drive upgrades
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The beauty of option a) is that any new hardware can be reused on the next notebook, and -- other than the possible need to install new drivers -- this is usually very low risk. Of course, software upgrades, such as moving from Windows XP to Vista, can demand more memory and disk space, perhaps motivating an upgrade. But caution is again advisable here -- do you really need a new operating system? Upgrades like these are usually not recommended, and it is often preferable to introduce new operating software on new PCs as the natural replacement cycle takes its course.
This situation is especially true in the case of Vista, which suffers from application compatibility problems -- despite the zippy new Aero user interface, which really does, by the way, require a whopping two gigabytes of memory to run well and adds very little in the way of useful new functionality. A final note -- I generally recommend against BIOS upgrades on PCs unless there's a known problem that needs fixing. FLASHing a new BIOS is somewhat risky, and there are usually few, if any, performance or functionality benefits here if everything is otherwise working well.
As for handhelds -- well, there are rarely opportunities for hardware upgrades, perhaps thankfully. But, frustratingly, software upgrades are also usually very limited. For example, my Motorola Q, which runs Windows Mobile 5, cannot be upgraded to Windows Mobile 6. This may just be a cynical attempt to get me to buy a new phone, which I do quite frequently anyway. Still, other software upgrades can make a lot of sense in extending functionality and thus ROI on handhelds. For example, though I can't get Windows Mobile 6, I can install a new browser that will produce a more satisfying and productive Web experience. It's also possible to add new applications to OS-based phones, and many of these are either free or fairly inexpensive.
Finally, make sure your cell phone is up to date with your carrier. The carriers usually make this easy. For example, on the Verizon Wireless network, enter *228 on the handset to make sure your Preferred Roaming List (PRL) -- whatever that is -- is current. Verizon states that performance is improved if this is done regularly.
No matter what, the cardinal rule of upgrades is this: If there's a quantifiable benefit -- adjusting for the risk involved, of course -- and the useful life of the device still has a good while to run, then do it. If not -- well, we'll review my recommendations in detail next time.
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This was first published in January 2008