"Here is your brand new car, sir. Drive it off the lot. Yay yay new car. Suddenly, new car shuts off. New car barely starts again and then only goes about 6 miles per hour and it belches smoke and every warning light on the dashboard is blinking on and off and the tires are screaming and the heater is blasting your feet and something smells like burned hair. You hobble back to the dealer, who only says, gosh, sorry, we thought you knew -- that's the way they all run. Enjoy!"

Read all about it here.

While at least one business reporter is asking if Microsoft is poised for collapse given what their customers are learning about the company and its products....

So why does Windows Still Suck?

Because it is a fundamentally flawed defective architecture and foundation. Windows was never designed to work in the computing environment of today: The Internet. It was merely repackaged (as this 1997 article shows) to be sold for that use.

Microsoft Windows is the equivalent of a nice sofa that is intended for indoor use only and the internet is the equivalent of "outside." When the internet came along Microsoft did not have a product capable of being used "outside" and they knew it. But they sold their indoor only sofas as patio furniture anyway and then have blamed their customers ever since for all the kinds of problems you could expect if you left your sofa outside in the cold, rain and dirt. Viruses, worms and other internet hazards are the equivalent of weather outside. Products that are designed to work in their intended environment have zero problems. Only Windows requires all kinds of after market anti-whatever software (kind of like 3M Scotgard) to sort of protect a product that was never supposed to be used "outside."

Microsoft also had and has a huge chain of co-conspirators: The PC Hardware vendors. They've happily lied with Microsoft about the quality of their Microsoft based products and continue to do so along with Windows specific publications. After all, if Windows loses its sales luster, they all lose.

So windows was never designed to be secure. It was designed for a closed network, where the appearance of security was adequate. Think of Windows like a safe that has a lock on it. Microsoft keeps improving the lock with every published exploit of their "safe." The only problem is that the lock is not the problem, because the safe itself is made of painted paper. It looks good from a distance but is easy to breach from almost any angle even accidentally by simply leaning on it.

Now a paper safe left in a locked office is pretty secure, because the office is secure. But a paper safe left outside in a crowded area is likely to be tested. And if a bunch of identical paper safes appear in the same crowded area are tested, found to be easy pickings and contain goodies.... Well you can see what is happening when Windows systems are placed in the crowded area called the Internet.

Microsoft will have to re-write Windows almost from scratch (like Apple did with MacOS X which is really NeXTStep) to fix it but that will break most of the applications that people buy Windows for in the first place. Microsoft can't do that!!! So instead they lie about how the problem is everywhere else except in their products. Microsoft tells you to "buy this and buy that add on....(ah Scothgard) then you'll be safe... Oh you got infected or owned???? You dear customer (who sends us $$$) are an idiot. You did not buy enough almost useless protection." Have you figured out Microsoft's game yet?

Microsoft and their codependents the PC hardware makers/sellers are like an auto maker and dealer network that tells you that its your fault that the paint melted off the car you purchased from them after a single hour of rain. After all you did not buy the clearcoat paint that was offered after market somewhere else for extra $$$. So it's your fault. We got your money. Tough.

As far as Microsoft is concerned *you* the customer cannot expect that a product they sold you will operate in the environment they told you it would work in: The Internet.

If you don't believe us, we challenge you to remove all the anti whatever addons you have on an MS Windows system and then use MS products for web browsing and email. But please do not use a system you care about (or that has your personal info and tax records on it) to do this.... or you could end up like this guy.

MS Windows defects create an entire add-on market for bandaid anti-virus, anti-worm, anti-whatever software and hardware that really does not work.

Have you noticed that *only* Microsoft systems require Anti-Whatever software! Why? Because Microsoft Windows is a completely flawed defective product. Yes, both MacOS and Linux require absolutely NO antiwhatever software of any kind to be operated safely on the internet.

Anti-Whatever products only cover the problem like paint over dry rot. The Microsoft code in Windows is the dry rot.

Can Windows be used safely on the internet?

No.... not entirely. The flaws run too deep into the system architecture. But you can mitigate the issues. You need to be both somewhat vigilent and not follow Microsoft's recommendations OR your PC makers recommendations either for that matter. PC makers to get the best prices are in bed with Microsoft by definition.

The basic steps for safe Microsoft Windows internet access are:

• Do not connect a new Windows XP/2000/NT system to the Internet until after you have completely updated all security patches. Nothing that comes out of the box is secure and then you have to remain vigilant for all the new patches that will be needed in the future.
• Windows 9x systems are less vulnerable to problems than newer Windows platforms. So if you are happy with Windows 98, keep it.
• Windows ME is more problematic than Windows 9x, but can be made to work.
• If you have Windows XP you must install Service Pack 2 at the minimum even if it breaks your applications.
• Install Mozilla Firefox
• Never use Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook or Outlook Express on the internet.
• Do not use SBC/Yahoo! bundled software. It is built upon Internet Explorer
• Do not use Comcast bundled software. It is built upon Internet Explorer.
• Do not use AOL. It is built upon Internet Explorer.
• Do not use MSN. It is built upon Internet Explorer.
• Do not use Microsoft Windows Media Player WMV files. They can execute programs on your system without telling you.
• Avoid online banking. Banks are not responsible for your losses as some have learned the hard way.
• Do not install Kazaa or swap *free* music online.
• Do not watch *free* videos from offshore pornography sites. This is the Windows Video file issue.
• Do not install Norton or McAfee antivirus software. Crackers love these products. So easy to disable and the computer owner can't tell.
• This list continues on for many pages, so.....to make this easier just use a local ISP that exists in your community, like A-Street, where you can take your system for setup to safely access the internet. National ISPs can't handle these problems, so they ignore them. Their customers lose with a 91% infection rate, but these ISPs would lose their customers anyway if they acknowledged that they are completely incapable of providing a safe service. So they do not mention it. This is causing their customers to give up on using their Windows computers on the internet.
• Use an Internet Service Provider that scans both email and web content for Windows toxic items like A-Street does.

Or get a Mac... (like the new $600 Mac Mini) if all the software you will ever want to run is available for it. And no, the after market Windows Emulator sold by Microsoft is not very good.

Or use Linux if you need full and complete access to the software, so no computer company can control your computing destiny.

Someone recently asked: "How will we know when Windows is a safe product?" Answer: When no anti-whatever software is bundled or required to use Windows safely on the Internet AND Microsoft guarantees it with CASH. Until then you know it is defective.

It is getting harder to tell when a Windows systems is compromised. And no Anti-whatever software will detect and remove these core exploits, because they control the entire system and tell the cobbled on antiwhatever software that everything is fine while they report home to their real master on the internet in some foreign jurisdiction outside of any US laws reach. These exploits have been around for years, but Microsoft has just recently acknowledged them.





Readers who are tired of messing with Windows viruses, worms, backdoors, etc. can bring their systems to A-Street for cleanup. If you signup for a year of ISP service, we'll clean out and protect your system for only $20 without reformatting the hard drive and having to re-install Windows. This means that you do *NOT* lose all your data!

Without a year of A-Street service, cleaning up a Windows system costs $150. And not signing up with A-Street is a bad idea anyway. You'll just get re-infected, because your existing ISP will neither inform or protect you.

BTW, anyone who says they can come to your house and clean out your Windows PC completely in less than an hour is lying. They can run a cleaning program in that time, but they can't find all the infections and exploits. Odds are your system will start acting up shortly after they leave. This is because the "Off the shelf" cleaning programs only find and successfully remove the easy to fix issues. And if you've got the easy to fix problems you most certainly have to the hard to fix ones too. There are good reasons for why you bring your car to the mechanic rather than have him come to your house beyond just the cost and they apply to computers as well as cars. Dell sells a different message, but home users who have purhased Dell products have a different story to tell.

Microsoft is now talking about entering the AntiWhatever business itself. That absolutely means that they *never* plan to fix their faulty defective products and instead plan to make more money getting you to pay for paint to cover their dry rot. Read more about that here.

Meanwhile the United Kingdom has started an alerting service to tell users of Microsoft Windows about pending virus outbreaks. What the UK should do is charge Microsoft for the costs of this service rather than taxpayers. Talk about "corporate welfare." This is corporate welfare for a company that is not even located in their country./