<rant>
Most people running Windows these days use Windows Update to continuously patch their buggy OS (I know I do..). The automatic download system is nice, Windows periodically checks for updates and you can instruct your computer to automatically download and install these updates. So far so good, the only thing is practically every update requires a restart, and usually you’re in the middle of something when the update finishes and you don’t want to reboot immediately. Fine, you can tell Windows to not update right away, but for this is where things get annoying – Windows suddenly goes into Nanny-mode. Every few minutes a message pops up telling you that you *really* should restart right away. This is pretty annoying if you’re in the middle of writing something and a stupid message pops up every few minutes to break your chain of thought. Annoying but probably bearable, if it weren’t for the fact that if you leave your computer idle for a few minutes, Windows XP will RESTART YOUR COMPUTER FOR YOU. Geez thanks a lot Bill, everyone who was viewing my webpage during the middle of the day just got cut off. What dimwit Engineer designed this system? Or did you assume that the fact that someone’s using Windows XP means they couldn’t t actually be doing anything useful with their PCs?

I was in a Physics seminar the other day and they were using Windows XP to run their powerpoint presentation. The presenter put up a slide and talked about it for about 15 minutes… just as he turned around to change to the next slide, his computer decided to automatically reboot, leaving the audience staring at a projected image of his PC rebooting. Nice one Microsoft.
</rant>