What the F***!

[Daedalus]

@TheDaddy

Yes, most things will require updates etc. like you say, but that doesn't mean that people need the updates. If it works 100% as they want it to, then good for them. The fixes probably wouldn't make a jot of difference to them.  I keep all my BIOSes up-to-date, but most of the time there isn't a single noticeable difference in the before and after machine.

@thread
I have 4 main tower machines, 2 of which are PCs. I upgrade them when the opportunity comes along (a CPU donated here, some RAM scavenged there), and pass the slower parts down the line. Right now I've retired an Athlon XP board in my Linux box and replaced it with a Pentium-D. I shudder to think about how much power that monstrosity uses! But since I only turn it on when I'm using it, and shut it down completely when I'm not, it's not really an issue. I'm sure there's more power used per month by the housemates and their use of lights, TVs etc. when they're not in the rooms.

[Daedalus]

@Deadalus

Most people won't but most people would benefit from updating. If you look at the manufacturer's sites you'll see lots of updates and this tells you that manufacturer (like software developers) release their product without proper testing in the knowledge that they have an escape route.

The same goes for the "crappy" A1 board...IF the manufacturer had the power, money, time, balls to sort it out then the A1 wouldn't have been as bad as it has been reported.

I don't think that many people would benefit. Most manufacturers are under pressure from competition to get their products out the door in order to make any sort of a profit and get some market share, so it's understandable that they don't get the rigorous testing that they probably should. If they spend an extra 2 months testing a product, their competitor will have their product out there with a 2 month head start, and people will choose the one that's on sale over the one that isn't, even if it needs updates.

However, they're tested in the common configurations, which means that most people won't require fixes. A lot of updates that I install have absolutely nothing which affects me because I don't use IDE or I don't use serial or hadn't notices a slight slowdown in graphics throughput because I'm not a gamer etc. Although some updates do fix issues that noticeably affect me, they're in the minority.

Bear in mind too that people will use motherboards etc. with hardware that the motherboard manufacturer couldn't test with, either because it didn't exist yet, or the standard wasn't finalised, or because only 0.01% of the population will ever want to add extra serial ports or whatever.

That A1 board is a completely different beast though - we all know about the issues with that and there isn't an excuse really...

[Daedalus]

@TheDaddy

Yeah, I get your point, and the A1 was never meant to be anything more than a developer board, and were made in such small numbers that they couldn't do the sort of testing that Asus do for example. I develop hardware for a living, the precision robotics / embedded computer type which we sell in similar numbers to the A1, and we have to draw a line to say we've done enough testing, even though we haven't absolutely tested it to death. We simply can't afford the time or the cost associated with such testing. However, 90% of our customers don't have a single issue and 10% of our customers do. So we release updated software, firmware, hardware. The A1 OTOH exhibits issues in what seems to be a majority of cases. Most people have fixed theirs, but faults that show up in significant numbers should be caught at testing, regardless of how large or small the company or production run is. I can't imagine ASUS for example releasing a motherboard which had faulty USB sockets for example, and we would never release a machine with those sort of faults either.