From: "Geo" 

"Mike N."  wrote in message
news:1krnj21ulhb7bihd194j5gscegggelcf7f{at}4ax.com...

>   For me, XP gave me the capability to reconfigure IP addresses without
> rebooting, as W2K randomly requires.

I do that all the time, simply go into network properties and disable then
enable the connectoid.

> IE7 is actually an important upgrade.  How else do I explain to
> Grandma how to safely bank online, and what types of E-mail to ignore?
Bank
> Of America sends out real E-mails that fail every description of Phishing
> that I can come up with.

Does grandma give out her CC number to whoever calls her on the phone and
asks for it? How do you protect her from that? Email is no different.

>    Vista will be a further step in the right direction, but it remains to
> be seen whether it will just train Grandma to be a click-monkey; and just
> click 'yes' to everything.

Vista (or any os for that matter) is not going to prevent user exploits. If
you are hoping for that, forget it. It's the user that needs to be patched
not the OS. The only fault I can find for the OS in this regard is that it
doesn't draw a clear line between where the machine ends and the internet
begins so users have a tough time telling what to trust and what not to
trust. Vista isn't going to make that any easier, just the opposite, search
is now global and blurs these lines even further.

>    I don't any of the features justify  the cost, but is part of the
rather
> astonishing economy where kids have a lot of discretionary spending cash.
> They can afford thousands of $$ per year on music, clothes and a car, why
> not drop $1000 on a PC and $479 on an OS upgrade every 5 years?

This is a horrible comparison but would you buy a car that only got half
the gas mileage of the previous model year, forced you to stay under the
speed limit, and allowed the bank to deactivate it if you were late on a
payment or mechanically tinkered with it in a way they don't approve of?
Would you consider that an upgrade? (oh sure it's got a cool radio but
really..)

Geo.

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