Assuming the vendor has some knowledge of the kind of enivronment the product will have to work in, Microsoft does not fulfill its moral obligation to the customer.

However, given todays virus and worm-infested mess, it will be a long time before all the old problems have gone away. The moment a 'new' Win98 machine is hooked up, another potential problem is created.

Do users need to know about this? To use the car analogy: everybody knows you have to lock your car if you do not want somebody else to use it without your consent. In computerland this easy-to-remember guideline is not really present. What is 'the lock' on your computer?People hear about firewalls, AV, scanning engines, unsafe attachments, security zones......

Microsoft is talking about updates. A naive user might think: I don't want new stuff, so I do not need to update. terminlogy like 'the lock on your computer is not safe, apply this to fix it' might be better understood.

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