Windows updates and dial up users

Mon Sep 22 10:13:00 UTC 2003

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Sean Donelan wrote:

> "It occurred to me that one way to make things easier for dial-up users,
> and even broadband users in many cases, would be to issue periodic update
> CDs. Imagine a disc with all of the updates on it and a program, it could
> even be written in Windows Script Host, to check a system for which
> updates need to be installed, apply them in the correct order and even
> reboot in between. Such a program would not be hard to write."
>
> [...]
>
> "I recently put this suggestion to Microsoft and their response basically
> avoided the whole issue. Why wouldn't the company want to offer such a CD,
> assuming that's the motivation behind their stonewalling?"

>From this month's issue of /PC Pro/ magazine (UK, Issue 109) :

"please accept our apologies for the lack of Microsoft patches or DirectX
on our cover discs. Microsoft US has banned the inclusion of any of its
code on magazine discs. Presumably, the company assumes we all have
broadband to download up to 166MB for DirectX 9b or 134MB for Windows XP
Service Pack 1a."

And that's without mentioning the mean-time-till-infection of an unpatched
system, of course...

Regards,

Jonathan