Jump right in

The news about Microsoft's major security update, SP2, has been mixed. I've read about some of the holes, some of the incompatibilities, but also, some of the benefits. A couple of days ago, I decided to finally take the plunge and apply the update that I've had in my hands for a few weeks now. I got my update by CD - having ordered it immediately after it became available. But I held off installing it until I could see how it worked on some other people's computers. A couple of my friends who use me as their computer resource were having some difficulties with their computers. I noticed that both of them had already downloaded and installed the SP2 update.

It turned out that neither of their problems was related to SP2; and having had a chance to examine the update on their system, I decided it was time to take the plunge. Well, it's been two days, and nothing has broken yet. I was pleased to see that, upon installation, the Security Centre recognized that I already had ZoneAlarm installed, and the Microsoft program left it intact, not even asking whether it should apply the Microsoft Firewall. That's a refreshing change from what I'm used to seeing. I was also pleased that the security centre recognized the Avast! anti-virus program, and correctly reported the version number; and that it was up to date.

Except for having to retrain ZoneAlarm regarding my lockdown preferences, I found the security centre to be quite well organized. And the popup-stopper integrated into IE's browser does a better, and more intuitive job than the Popup-Stopper was doing. So far, it's defeated every popup/pop-under I've encountered, without blocking access to secondary windows spawned through legitimate interactions. My initial impressions have been quite favourable.