Windows Vista SP1

"Microshite"

Poor Bill Gates would be very offended to read that.

yea, lets stay civil atleast..

It's interesting to note that MS have had so much trouble with this that they are offering downgrade rights to anyone who purchases a machine with Vista Business or Ultimate and wants to use XP Pro instead. The activation is just done by phone.

For some reason they only let you downgrade Vista Business & Vista Ultimate - not either of the home editions!

Next machine I get I'm going to 'upgrade' from Vista to XP

I use XP and i have it set NOT to automatically update cuz more often then not any updates mess it up.

XP is the most stable OS Microshite have ever had.

I have only ever used Microshite OS's but i have never updated them or allowed automatic fixes cuz they cause more problems then they solve.

Jeebus! You do security updates right? If not your machine is probably riddled with key loggers and root-kits and all sorts of nasties.

You simply MUST update ANY OS. That goes for them ALL. Linux, Unix, Windows, Mac, the lot.

TBH, the reason we have so much spam is because there are incosiderate people not updating their computers. To be blunt, if you're on the net with an un-patched machine you're part of the problem.

Bart.

Further to this I have carried out an experiment that looks like it may become permanent - I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) as a dual-boot on my laptop.

For all the standard web/office stuff it does everything Vista does only faster. It seems to be not quite so good at multimedia stuff but that's just a question of finding the right applications.

KStars is a great planetarium as is Stellarium and good to see Google Picasa works just as well on Linux as on Windows - only faster of course!

I've dabbled in Linux distros before of course, but this is the first one that has been really useful straight out of the box - even the wireless worked with not much more than a prod.

Worth a look if you're a bit cheesed off with Micorsoft's latest.