Migrating a TIA Portal project from V13 to V15 or V16 is not seamless. It often requires block recompilation, fixing library inconsistencies, and re-validating HMI scripts. For facilities focused on uptime, keeping V13 SP1 Update 4 installed on an engineering station was "better" than risking a migration failure on a production machine.
: It remains a "gold standard" for stability when maintaining older SIMATIC S7-1200 and S7-1500 systems that do not require the overhead of newer versions like v17. Technical Highlights of Update 4