susandennis | Very very rude

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So at 3:10 this morning, Microsoft decided it was time to reboot my machine and just went right on ahead. [NOTE: This is on my own personal machine at home. Microsoft can do whatever it wants to the hardware, software, my email or anything else on the machine they own that I use at work.] I am not a Microsoft basher. I wouldn't be one even if they were not responsible for my cash flow. I like the products of theirs that I use and I don't use the ones that I don't like. I like XP a lot. I appreciate the improvements they have made with it since it first came out.

But... And you knew there was going to be a but... I am the one who gets to chose when I reboot and when I don't.

I cannot wait for the next time someone tells me how important it is to download and install their updates and how I should let them do it automatically.

If you know the person who is going to tell me that next, you might want to warn them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jwg.livejournal.com

The practice of a company controlling the user's machines is common.

Several years ago I was consulting with attorneys for a company that was suing Novadigm and Marimba for patent infringement. The patents and the products were for networked systems that kept track of all files on each PC and could be used to restore damaged files, install softare, and uninstall software on all machines. The products were quite robust, scaled up well and looked pretty good. Novadigm settled for about 2.5 million and Marimba settled for an undisclosed amount.

From:

susandennis

Ohhhh thank you... I just added a note to the entry. I am totally fine with whatever the company who pays me wants to do with the machine, files, email, network, they own. I do not feel any ownership of any kind nor feel like I have any rights to privacy when I am using their stuff on their premises. They can reboot all they want.

But, at my own house on my own machine... I think I should get to call the shots. The reboot was my desktop machine at home... Sorry I wasn't clear.

From:

kyrielle

I never let my personal machine auto-update, for this very reason. I have a friend who is quite upset because her machine also did this last night...trashing the unsaved contents of several documents. Frankly, I think Microsoft is opening themselves for lawsuits by arbitrarily rebooting computers even when applications indicate there may be unsaved data or that they're not ready. Someone, somewhere, will lose data that's worth money and at least try to get it back. (I doubt they'll succeed, but....)

From:

susandennis

Oh it's even worse than that... I absolutely would NEVER let it auto update! Oh no. I have it set to let me know when an update is available but that's it. What happened was that I got such a notice and then did the update because, prior to this, if a reboot was needed, I just selected 'reboot later' and that was the end of it.

Until this one. I said reboot later and it kept asking me about every 20 minutes. Finally when I hadn't responded in 6 hours, it did the reboot anyway.

SOOOOO not good.