Dumping Microsoft isn’t always practical

November reminds us that reality is a cold and windy state.

Earlier this month, I discussed the links between social engineering and spyware. Peter Jespersen, technology architect at Nike, wrote in to advocate his “straightforward technology fix”: In short, dump Microsoft. Specifically, lose ActiveX, Internet Explorer, and Outlook.

As one may recall, that’s more or less what my homilies on “Why your next PC should be a Mac” lead to. But that’s not terribly realistic, is it?

I can’t be the only person who remembers that IE is so inextricably intertwined with Windows that removing it completely is impossible. Even if one installs Firefox and makes it the default browser, end-users still need IE to access important services such as Windows Update.

Granted, many corporate shops have their own patch-deployment scenarios that don’t use Windows Update or the soon-to-be-retired Software Update Services. But that leaves an overwhelming majority of Windows users dependent on these prerolled solutions.

I’m still using Outlook as a personal e-mail client, and why not? I have more than seven years’ worth of mail, contacts, and notes to myself that I really don’t have time to triage. On top of that, my “anti” software — that’s anti-virus, anti-spam, and whatever else is in the box — works pretty well with Outlook. But the day after it’s released, I’m gong to figure out whether Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 plus my preferred “anti” package can download my mail from multiple POP accounts to my obsolescent-though-well-within-spec Windows box without barfing.

This is what I and others refer to as the “tyranny of the installed base.” Although I’m not emotionally locked in, getting out requires more concentration than I can muster at this time — and this comes from someone whose press releases proclaim him to be an expert.

This is also why I face such an uphill battle with Her Majesty, Support Customer No. 1 (that’s Mom, to the rest of the family). I missed a great opportunity to get her off Windows when her hard drive croaked this summer, and it may be another year before I can spare the time to replace her Pavilion with a Mac.

Yes, my loved ones and I are in the position of the cobbler’s children who run around barefoot in winter. But these compromises should be second nature to anyone in IT. After all, we don’t deploy perfect systems; we deploy what’s available and within our budget.

Microsoft created much of the problem when Bill Gates and his underlings insisted that integration at the expense of security was good enough to ship. But the cold and windy landscape isn’t entirely Microsoft’s doing, and it’s not a result of global warming, either.

Brrr.