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Nine out of ten users love Windows "Mojave"

Microsoft had clearly tired of its operating system hegemony when it released Vista. How else can you explain its decision to develop a product, sit back as the world took a very big stick to it for 18 months, and then, just when the poor thing has been beaten to within an inch of its life, begin the $300 million marketing campaign. It's a rare kind of genius... but whisper it... it just may be working.

"I like Vista better then XP," beams satisfied customer r1sh12. "It's more smooth, never crashes and since I got Vista I've never had those stupid blue screens, or had to restore my PC. All my drivers were found without any problems. In my opinion this is the best Windows OS I've ever had."

Somewhere Bill Gates is blushing furiously, but r1sh12 wasn't the only one feeling the Vista love. Even ojfoggin was getting involved.

"I use Vista at home and XP at work. All I can say is that Vista works like a dream compared to XP. Some of the networking and advanced stuff is a bit harder to find in Vista but once it's set up it runs perfectly.

"I think the problem some people have is that they load Vista and when the log in screen comes up they go 'WTF! This doesn't look enough like XP! I'm gonna go back to XP NOWWWWW!!" That is the extent of their testing."

You clearly read our review.

cheysuli wasn't convinced: "Vista is stable, I've certainly never had problems outside Nvidia drivers. But Vista isn't fast and it isn't compatible. And unless you have 2GB and dual-core CPU, it sucks the life out of a PC. Corporate propaganda videos won't convince anyone who has used Vista otherwise."

We're not sure about that. It's worked for Apple.

ISP threatens to walk out of illegal file-sharing pact

If we're honest we saw this one coming. If the relationship between Anna Nicole Smith and that old guy was odd, then the shotgun marriage of Carphone "we won't kick anybody off the internet and you can't make us" Warehouse and the British "anybody who comes near our music should be hung" Phonographic Institute was just bizarre. But bless them they toughed it out for a whole day before the cracks emerged, with Carphone Warehouse admitting it would move straight back to its mum's house if the BPI tried to make it police the internet.

As always in these cases, it was up to the friends to take sides.

"I'm sorry, but what's wrong with the three strikes rule?" Asked GazzaT5, clearly unaware of our forum's propensity for answering blunt questions with battering ram answers. "If you've been caught stealing surely there should be some punishment! Yes there are privacy issues, but downloading music illegally is, well, illegal. The artists don't get any money when you rip them off do they? One of my friends was a bit incredulous when it was pointed out to her that downloading

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MP3s without paying was illegal - I mean, hello? Wake up."

"The problem is that the BPI want to be able to be judge, jury and executioner," responded hifidelity2, who was not only awake, but fed, watered and feisty. "Basically they want to be able to say 'We think that IP address X is downloading illegally and so cut them off without going to court and proving it'.

"As we know there are ways that people can spoof IP addresses - how would you like it if they used yours and didn't give you chance to argue the case? What if you have Wi-Fi and someone hacks that and uses it - should you be cut off? What if I steal your car and ram raid a bank should you go to jail for not securing your car to a high enough level to stop me being able to steal it?"

Meanwhile, schonyuk was hitting new heights of sarcasm: "Good idea, let the ISPs police the file sharers and Ford police dangerous drivers. Rayleigh can police errant cyclists and McDonalds can police litterbugs. What a load of cobblers."

Indeed, but the system does mean we'd get to police our readers. First law, anybody who writes in capital letters gets hung. See, we're stern, but benevolent.

Open source should be treated with "great caution"

That's right, according to security firm Fortify, using open-source software in enterprise businesses is the IT equivalent of hiking across the Serengeti in a pork-chop suit. gavomatic57 was not impressed.

"It sounds a bit like Danone. Its adverts for those silly health drinks lead the gullible to believe their digestive system will pack in without the aid of their life-saving yogurt drinks!"

"I would say that generally open-source software is no better or no worse than closed source software - with the exception that you can check for problems more easily," says Big_D. "I reported a bug in the beta of Microsoft J++ 1.0, it was still there in version 6!"

But just as everybody was getting nicely toasted at the "isn't open source lovely" party, bubbles15 decided to crash: "Not FUD, but fact. The issue that is of note is actually having the knowledge to unravel the code in the first place. As with all networks, use the best tool for the job. Sometimes that means Linux, sometimes a Mac sometimes Windows. Although if you use Linux you have my sympathies..."

"You have my sympathies not being bright enough to work it," shot back Gorillax, clearly channelling his inner eight-year-old.

The comment made paulzolo sad: "Here is the attitude which makes me steer well clear of Linux. Well clear. Clearly if you can not use Linux, then you are stupid.

We can't use the office toaster, imagine how we feel... but back to paulzolo.

"This is not the case. The simple fact of the matter is that Linux requires an in-depth knowledge of coding and command line chicanery which a lot of people don't have. If you ask for help, you get this kind of response... I use a Mac because I know I can just get on with things. I don't need a command line to do basic tasks, nor do I get snotty attitudes from other Linux users for daring to ask a question. When I ask another Mac user for help, I get a decent, polite answer. It's clear that if I ask a Linux user for help, I am very likely going to get attitude back. Linux is not a friendly place to be."

Which is much how we feel about Friday, so we're off to the pub instead. See you all next week.