[goedel]

The trick to painless updating, whether a server or your home pc or just a piece of software is simple - wait a week for the rest of the world to do it first! If you don't hear screams of anguish down the corridor, or from a neighbours house, or on the internet in that first week after release then go ahead and update because the catastrophic bugs will have been spotted.

From experience I can safely say that installing "urgent" and "critical" updates as soon as they are released is the fastest* way of messing your computer up!

*assuming you already have virus software, a firewall, a healthy suspicion of email attachments and websites offering to install things! Otherwise one of these will definitely screw things up even faster than fully-automatic Windows Update ( though it tries as hard as it can!). In fact, I should really write it as:

Goedel's Happy Computing Checklist

If you have all of these then you are probably wondering what all the fuss is about...

1. virus software
2. firewall
3. healthy suspicion of email attachments
4. healthy suspicion of websites trying to install things in pop-ups etc.
5. healthy suspicion of Microsoft. And their updates in particular

 

[goedel]

I know that after my advice to people above I shouldn't confess to it but I currently use IE7!

I have used Mozilla and Firefox in the past which I thought were good but not really any better than IE. Also certain banks of an online nature only worked "flawlessly" with IE in the past so I was stuck with about three browsers on the go at the same time...useful for checking your website works on different platforms though!

Putting tabs in IE7 allows it to hold on a bit longer in the market I think, but I've finally had enough (and I suspect many other people have) of Microsoft and will be fazing it out of my life!

Throwing MS Office out of the window was highly liberating in favour of OpenOffice, next I'll be getting rid of IE7 and then finally XP when I get a new computer. There is no way I will go anywhere near Vista - how can something so big and fat and bossy ever be secure and a pleasure to use?! I'm convinced this is just an operating system for the sake of making more money without provinding anything of use other than transparent windows...erm...wow, I've already got one in every room of my house!

Oh, and the price!! If it costs $300 in America why on Earth does it cost £300 here?? Sorry, this has ended up a rant against Microsoft...but then I can't think of someone more deserving. Possibly Google - who do what Microsoft do but by stealth instead. You can't trust any of them. (Calm down Goedel - time for your trip to the typewriter museum - doctors orders...)