Computing and Consumer Electronics
Common hardware upgrades include (for example) installing additional memory (RAM), adding larger hard disks, replacing microprocessor cards or graphics cards, and installing new versions of software. Many other upgrades are often possible as well.
Common software upgrades include changing the version of an operating system, of an office suite, of an anti-virus program, or of various other tools.
Common firmware upgrades include the updating of the iPod control menus, the Xbox 360 dashboard, or the non-volatile flash memory that contains the embedded operating system for a consumer electronics device.
Users can often download software and firmware upgrades from the Internet. Often the download is a patch—it does not contain the new version of the software in its entirety, just the changes that need to be made. Software patches usually aim to improve functionality or solve problems with security. Rushed patches can cause more harm than good and are therefore sometimes regarded with scepticism for a short time after release (see "Risks"). Patches are generally free.
A software or firmware upgrade can be major or minor and the release version code-number increases accordingly. A major upgrade will change the version number, whereas a minor update will often append a ".01", ".02", ".03", etc. For example, "version 10.03" might designate the third minor upgrade of version 10. In commercial software, the minor upgrades (or updates) are generally free, but the major versions must be purchased. See also: sidegrade.
When one replaces a product made by one supplier with a product made by a different supplier, one carries out a competitive upgrade.
Read more about this topic: Upgrade
Famous quotes containing the words consumer and/or electronics:
“The misery of the middle-aged woman is a grey and hopeless thing, born of having nothing to live for, of disappointment and resentment at having been gypped by consumer society, and surviving merely to be the butt of its unthinking scorn.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)