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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Microsoft to ship new versions with firewall enabled
Richard Cox wrote: > > On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 16:07 UTC, "Eric A. Hall" <[email protected]> wrote: > > | Wouldn't it make more sense to ship with all of the services disabled? > > Yes it would - at least to US - but that would inevitably create a load > for the Support desk. However as Microsoft charge for end-user support > I wouldn't put it past them thinking along those lines. I hope there's > nobody from Microsoft reading this list ... that might give them ideas! But who actually calls Microsoft for support? Bob and Beth Luser call their OEM, DELL, Gateway, Sony, Compaq, etc., not Microsoft. And I think the EOMs are getting off a little easy in all of this. Microsoft distributes their product to OEMs who have a fair a bit room to customize the default settings (all of the monopolistic arm twisting involving hiding IE icons, installing other web browsers, etc., ignored for now). How much you wanna bet if Microsoft distributes with the firewall enabled, OEMs will turn around and _disable_ it in the installation they sell? They are the ones who want to cut down the support calls. And they don't want to lose business to a competitor who ships with all of the bells-n-whistles turned back on because Bob and Beth are convinced the computer they got was "broken" because disabled (mis)features were not enabled out of the box. On the other hand, OEMs can be the Good Guys here and take the lead ahead of Mickeysoft and firm up the loose default setting they get from Microsoft. DELL has promised to do this... but I still don't know if their press releases will live up to reality. If any NANOGers out there make purchasing decisions about PCs with Windows, I hope you direct your business towards OEMs who do sell better secured distributions or demand that the OEMs do so. -- Crist J. Clark [email protected]
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