For those that don't know about Microsoft's latest update..

[RawAlex]

lassiter, sorry I just don't understand all of this. I don't use a microsoft browser, I don't accept mail attachments, and I don't need a zone alarm or anti-virus because I DON'T GET ANY.

Oh yeah, did I mention I connect to the net through a firewall set, and nobody from the outside can port scan me anyway? I do run two versions of spyware remover (microsoft / giant and lavasoft).

I let the microsoft stuff do what it wants, and let it go at that. The three paths of most virus infections are microsoft browsers, email attachments, and open machines. Firewall, FireFox, block attachments... your life is so much easier.

You cannot tell me for a minute that SP1 is more secure than SP2... SP1 is holier than the pope.

[Rorschach]

You guys need to lurk on some 0-day exploit irc channels for a while.

[lassiter]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Firewall, FireFox, block attachments... your life is so much easier.

That's pretty much what I was saying, Alex. I use Mozilla, Zone Alarm (um, you did say you use a firewall just now, right? ZA is the one I use), and have my McAfee anti-virus configured to auto-upgrade its data files and to auto-delete any suspicious email attachments before I ever see 'em. And I've never had a virus infection or OS takeover either. Now since I appear to have close to 100% protection already with little or no effort on my part, why would I voluntarily agree to "upgrade" to something that will not offer me any more protection than I already have, but will break a major crucial piece of hardware/software I use in my business (Pinnacle Studio 9)?

I'd agree with you that for the clueless who know nothing about the importance of firewalls and about the holes in IE and Outlook, the default settings of the SP2 upgrade will offer them some additional amount of protection. But not nearly as much as what I have installed and running just fine already with my 3rd-party applications.

For the record, I wouldn't have trusted Zone Alarm or McAfee's first software versions either. But they've been doing these apps for years now, while SP2 is MS's first-ever attempt at doing 'em - and I could probably find the pointer to the list of major exploits that ZA catches that got right through the SP2 firewall (though presumably one of the later SP2 patches may have fixed some of that).

In an ideal world, I'd be running some flavor of Unix, and if I ever start operating my own server network instead of using a webhost, my servers sure won't be running any flavor of MS.

[Useless]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

Firewall, FireFox, block attachments... your life is so much easier.

Ditto.
Since I switched to FF I haven't been stumbled by a single virus. I've had a firewall running for as long as I've been on broadband. Crazy not to.

[HappySmut]

i wouldnt recommend anyone applying a operating system upgrade over any older ms poop products cuase there is allways problems that happen.

fresh install is the best way to go with any ms products.

the back up options in xp are usefull however when a virus starts a rampage all over the computer it will infect those backed up files so a format is still the best path to take and why does norton antivirus 2002 have defualt scanning options to not scan ms backup folders? hmmmmm interesting indeed.