Corporate IT | 16 Nov 2009 :
Being the avid technophile, I am usually fairly early on the adoption curve, willingly installing betas where possible and even the odd technical preview before beta.
From operating systems to productivity suites, applications and communications devices, to be in on the first wave of any technology has its inherent benefits and pitfalls.
For example, my laptop recently had what can only be described as a "hot flush" as two very recent browsers all decided that every web page that required a log-in, displayed Flash or otherwise had interactive content, would time out, crash or just sit there with some annoying, insignificant animation repeating ad nauseam.
The natural techie in me jumped into tests to see what was causing the problems. There were elimination processes to see if the issues can be repeated reliably, thus suggesting a cause. Various parameters were investigated, with one browser, then another, pages loaded, details added but little seemed to be revealed.
A look at the application logs then revealed a few interesting titbits. Lines appeared here and there such as "version not supported", "beta version, report bugs" and the best being the quite direct "your version of xxx is not supported".
It was then that I sat back and realised that I may have been expecting a little too much from the bleeding edge. While certain elements of all of this new fangled stuff showed promise and hinted at new capabilities for when finally released in full polished format, currently there were limitations. This led to two more quanta of cleverness colliding for me, resulting in the formation of a new idea, namely that this is exactly what a pre-release version of anything is supposed to do, demonstrate promise and was not to be rolled out onto the frontline in a production capacity. This is true whether it be an operating system, a productivity suite, a browser, smart phone or a new web service.
So, after I had made a cup of coffee and sat down again with a slightly cooler head, those little cleverness packets started forming a regular stream by which I rolled many of the bleeding edge version of regularly used tools back to full release versions or point releases. Then, with a clean boot, I was met with stability and a new found ability to get stuff done.
The whole episode reminded me that anyone who lives in the fast lane of technology adoption can sometimes lose sight of the benefits of older tech. The search for the next killer whatever can sometimes lead to a loss of perspective, in two ways. The first being that when a new widget has a little flounce and falls over amid much panting and a bit of perspiration, it really is only a shy debutant and probably a one trick pony for some new feature or two. As such, one cannot be too harsh in such circumstances.
The other is that new capabilities are best weighed against everyday usage. So, if 80% of your users use 20% of the functions of a tool and find that stability is a highly regarded characteristic, then one must think very hard about moving to the next version without establishing that it can provide at least the same level of stability while delivering the new bells and whistles that will hopefully have users filling your inbox with praise, instead of your trouble ticket system with complaints.
That might seem like Egg Sucking for Grandmothers 101, but then again it is often a perspective issue that techies can sometimes do with a bit of clarity on - I certainly can. But then again, I used to be a techie, I am sure they are all past that sort of thing now.