The Importance of Upgrades

Believe it or not, I do check the statistics of the users visiting this site. I have become a little concerned about your security. Many of you are running older versions of web browsers which may make your system vulverable. Unfortunately, some corporate users are not allowed to upgrade. Your system is asking for hackers if you are not up-to-date on your Mac/Windows updates and browser updates.

I have been an information technology professional for 12 years, 1 week. I know what can happen. The first thing you should do is get up to the latest downloadable updates for your operating system. Now, I’m not telling you to go out and install Vista if you have XP. Unfortunately, that won’t work on a majority of systems out there. Also, I’m not telling you to go out and spend $129 on the latest version of OS X. It’s not always necessary. For personal computer OSs, the only ones supported are OS X 10.4 and 10.5 and Windows XP and Vista. For Macs, go to the Apple menu and select Software Update… download and install the latest updates. For Windows, point Internet Explorer to here or here… and follow the instructions.

Please stay away from Internet Explorer as your browser unless you have to. For Windows I recommend Firefox (click image below) and for OS X I recommend Safari. Firefox 3 will deliver a much better experience than Safari on Mac and I do recommend it when it comes out this Tuesday. I still like Safari on Mac, but Firefox 3 is a LOT faster. Even though Firefox at any verison is safer for you than MSIE, please keep your versions up-to-date. Remember, Firefox version 3 will be released Tuesday.