Left out security ? Are you saying my behind the hardware firewall NT4 box, which is wholly immune to any MSIE or Outlook Express vulnerability simply because those files don't exist on my box, and behind Zone Alarm Pro with every security update ever issued by MS is less secure than my WinXP boxes ? I have been "sysoping / wizoping" on line since the early 1980's and have never had an infection of any manner or form. Running XP on a brand new box, as yet unconnected to a network cable gets 5 - 8 hits from a ad and spyware scan. The mere presence of MSIE and OE in XP makes it inherently less secure. I can't yank MSIE or OE out of those XP boxes leaving them wholly exposed to security vulnerabilities like the spoofing whopper publicized on the 17th which to my knowledge still isn't fixed.
Contact my hardware manufacturer, that's a 3rd party issue ???? A third party issue that didn't exist until SP2 ????? there's over 200 programs / hardware drivers that stopped working immediately upon the release of SP2....and that's only what MS themselves have published. And I did speak to the manufacturer who told me it is a known problem with the onboard Intel USB controller and WinXPSp2. Spoke to Intel and they said it is a known problem but that Microsoft is responsible for fixing the problem. MS hasn't responded.
Yes I have issues with DRM. I have issues with shrink wrap agreements that I can not see before I buy, well until yesterday....if ya haven't heard Ms. Baker just won her court case and the courts said if I don't see the EULA before I buy, store / manufacturer must give me my money back.....Said agremeents say that they have the right to shut my software down remotely if they have "reason to believe" I am using their products inappropriately. These agreemeets also say that I can not hold them liable for damages for taking my machines out of service when it turn sout they were wrong. So Autodesk / MS or whomever shuts down my machine and I now have an employee sitting at his desk for 2 weeks twiddling his thumbs before they write back and say "whoops, we made a mistake". I gotta take $15k outta my pocket cause they made a mistake ? No, that doesn't sit well with me.
FUD....if that stands for "Funds" as in out of pocket and "unneccesary delays" then the letters are appropriate. Look at the performance figures for when MSIE and all related junk alone is yanked out of the OS. 15% in Adobe Publishing for example. As a businessman, I want the greatest ROI, I can get on my purchases. The fact is NT4 w/o MSIE and all that bloat runs programs much faster than WinXP does. You can't call an OS that runs programs slower an "upgrade". It wasn't true when Win95 came out and benchmarked 40% slower than W4WGs and it isn't true now.
XP-Home is a product without a real market as I see it....at least in suburbia. The average american family has two adults, 2.4 kids and today, at least one relative living there temporarily. That's 5.4 people per household. I have to shell out for a business OS for an 8 year old to use XP Pro cause XP-Home in a 6 machine household is the proverbial "mammaries on a bull".
I don't like invasions of privacy and that's why I don't like WU2. Can you tell me how WU2 is any more secure than WU1 ? In WU1, they made a point of telling you they weren't invading your privacy with the big splash screen telling you that during the Windows Update process, NO INFORMATION was being sent to Microsoft. The only difference between WU1 and WU2 is that in WU1, you downloaded a list from MS and a comparison of what you got versus what you should have was done on YOUR computer. In WU2, it's done on MS servers, giving them the opportunity to see exactly what you have in your machine. So why was this done ? Its the same exact list....so why change it unless you want to see the collected information ?
Whether that bothers you or not depends upon how much you trust MS. Since they have committed perjury on numerous occassions, faked tests, lied extensively, illegally bound products together, bullied suppliers, etc, no I do not trust them. Even if you select "disable" for WU, it does not really disable anything. It still snoops and reads your Hard Drive, collecting all the information, it just takes no action after doing so. For what purpose is this taking place ? Whe even have a "disable" choice ? With WU surgically disabled, as with Xp-antispy, you are no less safe than you are w/ it as long as you make frequent vists to the link below or use a 3rd party product like BigFix:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/current.aspx
The last 20 years have been characterized by pundits commenting on american culture as too focused on form rather than substance. The Microsoft OS epitomizes this cultural shift...we have doggies, talking paper clips, and lots of fluff, but on any single piece of hardware, we are doing it slower and slower with each OS. InfoWorld studied the Win95 "phenomenon" and reported that American business spent between $2500 and $4500 in staff and direct costs upgrading from Windows for Workgroups to Win95. As was shown in the PC magazine roundup that year (although they separated the benchmark tables by more than 100 pages) the Win95 boxes in their roundup benchmarked an average of 37% slower than the W4WGs boxes. $3500 to go 37% slower does not have a positive ROI. While it may not pay today, for technical support reasons, to buy a machine with Win2k, it certainly does NOT pay to upgrade one from Nt4 or Win2k.
And finally, activation is a PITA. After the problem with the Saitek keyboard, I had to reformat the HD. Doing so, despite the MS web site statements, required that I spend 20 minutes on the phone arguing the legitimacy of my request with a woman whose ability to understand and speak english should have prevented her from getting a driver's license.