Every other day a new flaw in Microsoft Windows seems to threaten the world. Microsoft's response came primarily in the form of service pack 2 for Window's XP, which, among many security enhancements, reemphasized the automatic update feature of windows and (I believe) turned it on by default.
The idea was that while Microsoft had regularly released patches and updates to combat the flaws and exploits that threatened its users in the wild, most people were not getting them. I mean, how often do you think your mom would go to the windows update website to download the latest set of patches? Yeah.
So anyhow, Microsoft changed things around to force the patches down our throats. Now for the most part, I'm not against this. I have a T-shirt that says "No, I will not fix your computer" for a reason--most of the maintenance work I end up doing for friends and family could have been prevented if their computers had been kept "up to date". But there's a problem.
Some (most?) of the updates released by Microsoft require the computer to be rebooted as part of the install process. Microsoft's solution? Keep popping up a nag message every 5-10 minutes asking if the user would like to reboot now or later. And if they don't respond...just reboot! Well Microsoft: screw your auto-reboot. The nag screen is bad enough if you're in the middle of a movie or show or presentation at work, but the worst part is when I get up for 10 minutes to get a coffee and come back to see my computer sitting at the windows logon screen. Where did my unsaved work go? It didn't fall victim to a virus, or an exploit. No, it fell victim to a feature.
So despite the benefits, I'm turning automatic updates off (or at least automatic installation). It's a fool me once, shame on you type of situation...and this isn't the first time I've been fooled.
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