On Sunday 13 June 2004 08:28, John Andersen wrote:
On Saturday 12 June 2004 17:39, Hans du Plooy wrote:
XP currently comes with service pack 1a already installed. Which leaves you with, last time I checked, bout 12 updates to do.
That depends entirely on where you buy the machine. Not all pre-installers put the service packs on, So who's fault is it if you get a preloaded machine without the updates? Of course, it's the supplier who loaded Windows without doing the updates.
and if you go to the store and buy XP in the retail box it is STILL unpatched, an it contains no notices of any patches or service packs. No but it does tell you to use Windows Update the first time you boot into it. That little annoying yellow popup in the lower left corner that most people just close without reading it.
Windows XP or 2000 without the service packs shouldn't even be on the market any more, and you can demand it from your dealer or go someplace else. Even in this technologically retarded third world country where I live, I can walk 5 blocks to the nearest dealer and buy Win2k or XP with SP4/SP1a respectively. My point is, we linux users take security for granted (wrongly, in part, because linux machines without their patches applied and firewalls installed, get rooted and compromised too), just as windows users take things like (subjective) ease of use and hardware compatibility for granted. STILL, with basic precautions, a network of windows PCs can be made secure. The company I work for does, amongst other things, desktop support for SMEs. We have PCs and servers running anything from Windows 98 to Win2k3 server. We have not had a single infected PC all year so far. No Sasser, no Blaster, no Netsky, no MyDoom. We're lucky in linux. The numbers are on our side. If linux was on 90% of the world's desktops, we had all better do our updates and run a firewall - there would be a lot more guys out there trying to make trouble for us. Granted, it would be harder, but not impossible.
Because of this, XP (and Win2k) have done more damage to the internet and inflicted more costs on users than any other software. Agreed.
-- Kind regards Hans du Plooy Newington Consulting Services hansdp at newingtoncs dot co dot za