Another Bad AutoUpdate

If you’re a web master you may not be happy with last week’s automatic update from Microsoft. It seems changes made to Internet Explorer 6 may cause it to crash when users visit your web site. (More Info)

If you’ve read my previous entries you’ll know I think auto-updates are evil. It seems like almost every Tuesday Microsoft is pushing out another security update. This week even the Dept. of Homeland Security went public encouraging users to obtain the latest security update.(More Info)

Meanwhile, I’ve been recommending setting Automatic Updates to
“Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them”.
Or…
“Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them”

Given the frequency of failures, I usually wait at least a week before installing new updates. That gives the world time to beta test Microsoft’s new code and find any errors.

The last big one was a failure of certain HP applications. This week its a problem viewing web sites which use HTTP version 1.1 along with compression. IE will just crash.

Even before this recent failure others have been discussing the problems of upgrades and quick to market software.

InfoWorld: Ed Foster wrote about “The Source of Bad Software”
Sunbelt BLOG: Deb Schinder wrote, “Are You an Upgrade Renegade?”