Even a 2-year old Galaxy SIII which was $500+ can't run Kitkat . It is stuck at Jellybean 4.3 . No update from Samsung.

I know because I'm using one now after my $600 LG G3 was stolen a month ago.

I'm not really keen on buying yet another device now.

That's incorrect. Play provides updates for apps, but not for the OS.

What stick would you suggest they use ?

They provide the OS in source form, then each device maker and carrier goes out, compile it and ship it for their hardware.

I don't see how Google can fix the upgrade mess with the existing devices.

Even if carriers and device makers were uptaking, recompiling, and shipping security updates for their old device/OS regularly, they are still dependent upon Google to provide support for the base Android OS.

Google has repeatedly disregarded customers by not backporting security fixes to the main trees of their old Android OS.
In this case, even if the carrier or device maker wanted to update the old device, there would be no fix for the old OS available.
But of course carriers and device makers currently have no economic incentive to provide security updates in the first place.

Agree having the latest OS is not the consumer's highest priority. After all, they bought that device with a particular OS version.

However, over time every OS has security vulnerabilities discovered. The support model for Android updates for said vulnerabilities, as currently done by either device makers or carriers, is broken, IMO.

Actually, many smartphones are pretty expensive, you just don't see the actual cost because most US carriers are obfuscating the price into their plan subsidies.

The exception is T-mobile. You will see that last year's top tier smartphones like Galaxy S5 and LG G3 were in the $600 range, not cheap by any means if you are going to upgrade every year.

In comparison, you can buy a $600 laptop or desktop computer, and keep it many years, and get security updates for the OS you choose to install on it on it from the OS vendor for many years. But there is no such choice on a mobile phone, you are typically locked to the OS that came with it, and can only obtain updates for it from the device maker or the carrier.

You can't generally just wipe the OS on your old device and install another OS on it that supports hat old device, and still gets regular security updates.

There are some mods like Cyanogenmod, but first you need to root your device.
Generally, rooting is done by first exploiting one of the many unfixed security vulnerabilities in the OS ;).

But even after that, the modded OS tends to have a lot of issues on many devices, as they are not tested by the developers on all available devices.
And unlike a PC, the base hardware between phones varies much more, so you can't get a single base OS image to work for all smartphones like you can, say, have a single Windows or Linux CD/DVD install that can be installed on all PCs.

When was the last security update released for Windows 7 ?
Answer: last tuesday.

When was the last security update released for Android 2.2.3 ?

If she was taking antiretrovirals and maintaining an undetectable viral load in her blood, you were not at risk of getting infected with HIV .

http://www.natap.org/2013/HIVw...

Thank you. Our doc says I will likely live a normal lifespan as long as I'm on meds.
It's anyone's guess what "normal" means.I'm kind of skeptical given my dad passed of pancreatic cancer at 67.
My husband might be at a bit more of a disadvantage given early AIDS diagnosis. However, he also started meds much earlier than me and that could counterbalance things. I still have about 300-400 more tcells than he does, but we don't know how many either of us had before HIV so hard to conclude anything from that. We are both in the normal range - he is on the lower end of the range; though.

Spelling is also not one of your strong points, AC.

Firstable, we are a married gay couple. There was no one getting on the down low. We weren't married back then, though, hence the tests.
I'm not going to elaborate any more with an AC, though.

Yes; but we were infected with identical virus. The difference in disease progression was due to our genetics, not the virus mutating.

I'm somewhat skeptical here. From my very small n=2 study, my husband and myself, infected the same year in 2006 (we both had HIV negative and positive tests that same year) with the same virus, as evidenced by genotype mutations test, I can tell you that my husband progressed from HIV to AIDS in less than a year, and had to go on antiretrovirals right away, whereas I didn't need medication for years and chose to remain without them for 4 years. I was in HIV controller studies. There was no change to my immune system on paper. But I was very tired, and I later chose to go on meds anyway. I had to drop out of the studies for this reason. I don't know what came of them. We are of different ethnicity - I am of caucasian and middle eastern descent; while my husband is asian; so our genetic are probably quite different.

It seems to me that this difference in disease progression between countries may have less to do with the virus itself evolving than it does with people's immune systems and genome evolving and becoming better able to deal with the virus.

Just wait until for the deadly delivery drones.

that money can buy.

Actually, there is no microSD slot on the Nexus 6 or 9 .

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/10/15/motorola-nexus-6-everything-you-need-to-know/
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/192061-nexus-9-unveiled-43-screen-64-bit-tegra-k1-soc-android-5-0-and-no-micro-sd-slot

Also, the battery is non-removable.

I will keep my LG G3 .