Greetings:
Last night when shutting down
my computer (Dell XPS 400) with Windows XP, I noticed
a new little appendage to the "Turn Off" button.
It was the little shield-shaped icon that Windows
uses to notify you that there are updates available
to be downloaded and/or installed. Heretofore, a
notice appeared in the System Tray area. Now, however,
the geniuses at Microsoft have decided that if I
did not elect to install the updates while the computer
was on, then it would do it for me prior to allowing
the computer to shut down. While doing the updates
(10 of them in this case, taking about 10 minutes),
it kept flashing a message warning me not to turn
off the computer - that it would turn itself off
automatically when completed. This is reminiscent
of the old AOL software days, which is one of the
many reasons I abandoned AOL a decade ago.
This REALLY sucks because I turn off my UPS
right after the computer shuts down, so I had to
stand around ad wait for all the
updates to finish installing. I can just imagine
the outrage this new "feature" will cause when some
poor unknowing schmuck is sitting in at the gate
at an airport waiting until the last possible moment
to turn off his notebook computer before boarding
the airplane, when he (or she) gets this message
warning not to turn off the computer while updates
install.
I'm sure MS will catch a lot of
well-deserved grief over this debacle. Hopefully,
the next time my computer tells me to hang around
and wait for the computer to turn off while it installs
updates, one of the updates it is installing will
be the undoing of this annoyance.
