Contrary to what this so-called expert says, since most coffee shops no longer use styrofoam, a cup of coffee can cool significant in the 11 minutes it takes to retrieve the list of passwords. Even in 5 minutes, the temperature will drop by several degrees. Frankly, I think this glaring error takes credibility from this supposed research.

If you have a new, or reinstalled, Windows installation, you *cannot* connect to the internet, or you'll be dead within minutes due to remote exploits of the default network services. Your only chance is to connect (wired!) to a NAT box or other firewall (e.g. a Mac running internet sharing) in order to run Windows Update or Microsoft Update.

You probably won't be dead in the water with Mac OS X, but it's not a bad idea to be cautious.

For a new Windows installation (e.g. Boot Camp, Parallels, VMware, etc.), it's a good idea to download all of the patches (e.g. security patch rollups, etc.) in OS X *before* you install Windows. Then you can *disconnect from the network* (make sure you don't have a wired or wireless network that Windows can connect to) install Windows, and install all of the patches (e.g. from a burned CD or a flash drive) before you're dead.

It's still a good idea to run Windows Update behind a firewall, NAT box, or internet sharing, however.

Much harder to hack out of the box, almost impossible with the proper utilities and configurations installed.

I don't find this surprising at all. This was XP SP1. SP2 fixed a LOT of things. Where I used to work we didn't even deploy XP until SP2 was available. Actually I'm surprised that it took them 6 minutes. For those planning on putting XP on our Macs, however you plan on doing it, it isn't quite this bad because any XP disk you get now will be at least SP2 and often SP2 plus some patches.

That said though the idea of downloading as many patches as you can off line and installing them before you take your XP on the web is a good one. Either that or have your system behind really tight firewall.

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jimothy wrote:
Contrary to what this so-called expert says, since most coffee shops no longer use styrofoam, a cup of coffee can cool significant in the 11 minutes it takes to retrieve the list of passwords. Even in 5 minutes, the temperature will drop by several degrees. Frankly, I think this glaring error takes credibility from this supposed research.

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Guest wrote:

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jimothy wrote:
Contrary to what this so-called expert says, since most coffee shops no longer use styrofoam, a cup of coffee can cool significant in the 11 minutes it takes to retrieve the list of passwords. Even in 5 minutes, the temperature will drop by several degrees. Frankly, I think this glaring error takes credibility from this supposed research.

Actually it depends if the coffee is black or creamed. Coffee with a creamer cools at a much slower rate according to a scientific study I saw in the "Journal of Irreproducible Results"...

Just how many people are going to have to reinstall XP off CD from SP1 or before, lots by my count. Almost noone is going to go out and buy new XP CD's when they have one in hand.

Some people I know have to go to the coffee shop just to get fast enough Internet to download the patches, their DSL is just not fast enough, especially after a clean install.

As far as downloading XP patches offline, great idea, but try to do it in practice, not many people can manage that task, even among the bunch of highly skilled technical people I deal with. The word was you had to install the patches in the precise order or very bad things happened.

BS. get a mac. There better anyway