Tell your customers and clients that any security system based on secret information is doomed to fail as soon as the secrets are distributed. If it's really secure it won't matter that the bad guy knows how it works. If words aren't enough, make a test case out of the guitar string company "Ernie Ball" that featured recently in /. Mr Ball points out a whole list of M$ propaganda and myths.

Gotta love these M$ guys. "That free shit over there that can be scrutinised is not as safe as our expensive shit here that relies on secrets and lawyers. By the way, do you have the newest version of our piece of expensive shit? If you don't have the latest version of our shit then TerrorPaedophileCommunists will e-rape your wife and kids (terms and conditions apply)."

lift the computer an inch or two off the desk then drop it

Well, I quoted him. He was spending more time messing about than working.

XP would fall over. He'd give up after a few days messing about and take it into a shop. Couple of weeks later, it would fall over again. If I was nearby I'd fix it, but often it wasn't possible because I live in a different country. The problem is my that dad doesn't know what he's doing (like the people in the question) and his 'repairs' were often worse than the perceived problem.

The reason my dad is doing better now is because he isn't fixing his computer all the time. Now his system is easy to use and it doesn't fall over. No brainer.

I do know what I'm doing with windows (and a few other OSs) but my job is not being on call to fix my family's computers :D

I disagree with the "OSs don't matter" part, for the record. In my opinion, there are good OSs and bad OSs for a particular job, the trick is to match the two together. For example, if the question was "what system should I get my teenage kids who like gaming?" then my suggestion wouldn't be a mac! :P

My father has his own business with two employees - him and his wife. He wasted years of his life (and lots of money) messing about with XP. He came to me in despair one evening, he'd had enough. I told him to try a mac (linux was not very friendly 3 years ago). Now he runs his business himself with zero IT problems and he owns about 5 macs. He still has no idea how computers work, but it doesn't stop him getting the job done.

Response to Q.9 doesn't impress and doesn't answer the question.

P.S. Why does slashdot take half a minute to respond to the first press of the "preview" button when I only typed one line of ASCII? :-)