From: "Geo." 

"Rich"  wrote in message news:3e38c26d$1{at}w3.nls.net...

>   For other reasons, I think it is impractical.  You expect a full release
for any update.  This is a good way to discourage any software vendor from
making releases.  The testing effort is enormous.<

What's to test, it's a patched version, it's not expected to be any more
stable than the full version after you apply patches.

But perhaps MS could learn something here from the free software community.
The testing should be continuous and the improvement should be there in
every new build. Granted a security patch may introduce a new bug but the
release should also contain the mods for the 22 other bugs that were fixed
since the last iso.

What you do is a monthly build, all month long they run it internally then
release it just like they do with beta builds to beta testers, except
instead of trying to tightly control distribution you promote everyone to
share their copies with everyone else running the same version (just like
security patches can be shared, it will save bandwidth by not requireing
everyone to download).

Now before you go off on the copying issues involved consider something,
consider a thousand people who run an illegal copy of NT and consider the
same thousand people running linux instead. Which is worse for MS?

>>   Back to the selfish reasons, I do not want to do full product installs.
Updates are very easy in comparison.  <<

I believe I specified in the previous post that there should be a
"patch" mode install, where all it does is check version numbers
on all installed files and just replaces the ones that need replaced. Might
take a little longer than a single hotfix but probably be faster than
applying half a dozen hotfixes.. certainly less labor intensive than
applying 6 hotfixes.

>>Also, unlike you, I don't have problems building an up to date system from
scratch.

I  bet you do but you just don't know it. Have you ever taken the time to
verify that all the hotfixes are actually installed and that you are in
fact running the latest versions of all the files they replace? Trusting
windows update doesn't mean you are really up to date. It just means the
right entries are in your registry.

>>   Finally, we've already discussed that you can build your own integrated
installs for Windows including service packs and hotfixes.<<

My building my own installs isn't going to protect the internet from old
exploitable software being installed daily because the people installing it
can't get the current build on CD.

Geo.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-4