“Is it me, or has there been a recent wave of headlines from
Redmond that add up to a Microsoft clamp-down of the sort that
could easily drive people away from destkop Windows? The most
recent these, which not surprisingly, has drawn a very vocal
reaction from some ZDNet’s readers, is a news story about how the
grace period that allowed Microsoft customers to disable the
automatic installation of the security update-laden Windows Service
Pack 2 is coming to a non-negotiable end (so says a page on
Microsoft’s Web site). Says News.com’s Ina Fried in the story,
‘Microsoft is alerting customers that it will soon start delivering
Windows XP Service Pack 2 to all customers using Automatic Update,
whether they want it or not…'”