Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

Here's Your Check, Sir. After sorting through a few paragraphs of frustrated venting, he mentioned something that actually had me laughing out loud - the man invoiced Microsoft for his loss. I was speechless. Rather than considering this whole thing as a learning experience, he actually went for the cash - literally.

Even though I’m still not completely sure where blame lies with regards to this situation, I think this could be the beginning of a new trend. Seriously, the next time a family member's PC ends up with a virus, I will simply invoice Microsoft for the money spent repairing the security flaw that allows code to be executed so easily. Hey, it's easy money.

Send In the Clowns. Shortly after the incident, the "hate mail" started to trickle in. My favorite had to be the genius who suggested that he buy a Mac. Apparently this same individual did not bother to read the article very closely - remember the mention of company required software? Well, the chances are pretty darn good that it runs on Windows. Oh sure, there is always parallels or VMware, but let's forget about this as most of us would rather run our applications natively, regardless of the OS.

I have to admit, this particular writer really did not deserve the digital spanking that some of his readers gave him. The Windows Nuts (reread my disclosure above) came out of the wood work saying that he should "just get a Mac." On the same side of the fence, however, I did spot a couple of would-be Linux users echoing the same tired song as the Windows camp. In short, it must mean that the user was not paying attention.

How should have people responded? Perhaps with a little tempered consideration and less of an attitude. While he was foolish to trust the auto-update feature, there is no way in the world we can think of everything. Even technology writers make mistakes. After all, Guy Kewney of Newswireless.net is most certainly not a beginner.