Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

(Column) - If there was one commonality to describe the "hardcore" users from all three computing platforms, it would have to be the fact that many of them spend too much time making excuses for their OS' inadequacies. When they're not doing this, they're hard at work poking and prodding their least favorite columnists.

Now, I realize that most users from across the board are rational, thoughtful, non-OS extremists. Taking that fact into account, there are those few remaining people out there that honestly make me wonder.

One of the most recent items to this effect that come to mind includes an article at The Register. I have since lost the link, but the general gist of the piece basically stated that this individual felt totally betrayed because Windows had failed him while working on an apparently very important project. As it turns out, this individual's Windows box took it upon itself to install some needed updates and then reboot itself. From there, chaos ensued.

Who Is Really at Fault Here? The same article goes on to explain how there was a sizable cost, thanks to this mishap with his lost data. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: who's really at fault here? Was it this person's fault for not having a firm enough understanding that you should never trust any Microsoft update until you have reviewed it closely before installing it? Speaking for myself, I do not allow automatic updates on any of my PCs, since I’ve been burned too many times with updates gone haywire. This same stringent policy goes for my Linux boxes as well. But regardless of what I may have done differently, the damage is done for this person, and by golly he is looking to place some blame. And since he was using a company required text editor that may not have provided much with regard to document recovery, it's definitely not something that could have been backed-up, I suspect.

To be honest, I sympathize with his loss. Seriously, I have lost implacable data that cost me a lot of time, money and heartache. Unfortunately, even when he chose to set the updates to "custom," he was under the mistaken impression that Microsoft would not ignore his settings and simply do as the update pleases.

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