I embrace moving forward with technology. Alot of people say they don't trust Microsoft anymore and are afraid to download service pack 2, others are shying away from SP2 until MS receives as fixes it first batch of error reports.
I don't believe there is any reason for not trusting Microsoft anymore. XP2 is just the natural evolution of software operating systems. You hear so many articles about windows vunerabilities, exploits, etc circling the web almost every week. Everytime a new operating system is released to the world everyone has the opportunity to try to exploit its flaws, It's software people, it isnt flawless. I'll tell you we are along way from Windows 95! I thought Windows 2000 was a major advance from the 95/98/ME world. XP just added to Win 2ks offering. This latest patch goes out to fix and help circumvent alot of the vunerbilities that have been exposed and exploited in the current batch of operating systems. I still wonder how a system will function if it already has spyware embedded in the IE layer and XP2 is installed.
I dont know about you guys but any machine I run has an up to date virus scanner, a firewall (hardware router based, and software based) and s spyware detection program. I really recommend Webroot's Spy Sweeper Not only does it stop spyware, but it monitors any attempts to change your browsers homepage, and any new software programs that have set themselves to run at startup. I found it kinda funny after installing SP2 that SpySweeper came up and listed 25 different system programs that wanted to run on startup and gave me the option of keeping or removing the changes.
One of the things I wish Microsoft would include is more information about what programs are using what resources. They new firewall setup prompts you when a new program is attempting to access the internet, and allows you to block or unblock the connection attempt. Kinda reminds me of ZoneAlarm, but hey, a welcomed advancement. I would still like to see a utilization graph or something of available bandwidth to see, by application, the apps that are taking bandwidth, and how much they have consumed over time. This would also allow you to see which applications on your machine were using bandwidth, which would be nice to know.
Another bonus feature is the advancements made to Internet Explorer, the information bar and popup blocker are nice improvements. I just hope it can also help stop people from making the mistake of clicking yes on anything they see and installing malicous applications that can hurt thier PC. I really feel sorry for most consumers who use a computer and don't know as much as I have learned by experience. If I didn't know better, I would probaly have 20 spyware applications running, a plethora of viruses, I would have given my financial information away to who knows how many Russian hacker groups that now sell it to the highest bidder. Needless to say, my internet experience would be nothing like i wanted, nothing would ever work. All the people I know would say I keep sending them emails, although I still hadnt figured out quite how to do that for sure. And to top it off, I wouldn't have any money in my bank account because half of it had been transferred to Zambia or some other African nation, and the bank would know my porn surfing habits better than I do. I would be too scared to use the internet anymore, let alone buy anything on it!!!
Now to my problem with SP2: I ran into this once, it was kindof a fluke and hasn't happenned again, although I have only been using SP2 since Monday. I was tranferring some files to a server using WS-FTP. It was a pretty big transfer, approx 6.5 gigs of data. Meanwhile I was also working on the server in a remote terminal session. I ran into something where I needed to reboot the server, so I did. Ooopps, I forgot WS-FTP was transferring files, as I saw this after my remote terminal window closed. Anyway, I closed WS-FTP and went to open Internet Explorer. I immediately got an error message "You do not have the proper security or permissions to run the program", what??? So, It had been a minute I tried to reopen my remote desktop connection with the server I was working on, "You do not have the proper security or permissions to run the program", WHAT??? It turned out I couldn't execute half of the links on my desktop. I could open My Computer, but not alot of my applications. I tried Internet Explorer, again, I even drilled down to C:\program files\Internet Explorer and tried IExplore.exe directly, same result... Ok, time to reboot. So I rebooted and everything was fine. I havent experienced that one again, but I didnt try to recreate the problem. We'll see what happens.
I guess the morale of my ramblings is this. Get SP2, I think the benefits outweigh the problems, or the potential problems you may run into. This patch is best for people that may find themselves in the “too scared to use the internet anymore” which for most of us I'm sure are our parents or some of the older generation individuals we may know and we are the one who they call to help with all thier computer problems.
Till next time - Gavin out...