I understand some of your frustrations, but I have to say that only too often, it doesn't look any better from the user side. Face it, most helpdesks are (thinly) manned by relatively inexperienced people who only took the job because they didn't know yet how tedious and frustrating it is. The service tends to be in line with that.

When you report a problem to them, you probably first have to wait for several days, because there never are enough service people. Then they will take over your computer and make the user watch while they google for the problem and its possible solution. Not necessarily a stupid thing to do, but it tends to undermine confidence. When did you last see a doctor entering your symptoms in Google? At least they don't do it while you watch.

In any large organization, somebody may have had the bright idea of appointing technology or product specialists. This usually means that there are only two people in the IT service team who are allowed to know how to reboot a Linux server. One is now in charge of the company webpage and has been officially banned by his manager from doing any service work on any server whatsoever. The other one is crossing the Sahara on a camel and not expected to return within three weeks, if ever. Users tend to find this mildly frustrating.

And woe to the user who would be so foolish as to have a client-server connectivity problem: This involves at least three people, one for the server, one for the client, and one for the network. Each is apt to report that, whatever the user may say, *his* part of it is working perfectly well -- problem solved. (And besides, they didn't change anything, and if they did nobody saw them do it.) Eternity may pass before they agree on whose fault it is, and what should be done about it.

Nevertheless, the first prize for weeping and gnashing of teeth goes to service organizations who decide that it is much better if they alone decide what hardware and software people should have. Evidently, this makes service and maintenance much easier. And it stands to reason that nobody could or should ever need a tool that is not made by Micro$oft---besides, they were given such a good deal on Vista! No need to ask the users. There is no justification for asking the users, anyway; what do users know, after all? They don't have to maintain the systems.

But absolutely the low point in confidence is reached when the IT service people approach the users and *ask* them to complain about the service. Because this is the only way in which they could hope to force a change in their wretched management.

This may be too optimistic. The situation you describes applies mostly for home users: Their suppliers had few other options than making sure that their software would run on Vista.

But it doesn't really apply to other segments of the market. The Royal Navy recently put Windows in a nuclear submarine -- but they opted for Win 2K and XP. Most companies and large non-commercial buyers don't have applications that are that critical, but the smart ones still avoided Vista and are betting on moving from XP to Win 7. Many specialized software applications continued to run on XP, often the preferred OS for both vendor and customer.

Of course that doesn't necessarily mean that the software can't be run under Vista: Most applications made with recent tools probably will. It does mean, however, that there will have been a minimal effort in optimizing and troubleshooting these applications with Vista. This will now have to be done with Win 7.

SOX was the reaction to a series of big financial scandals, with the Enron affair being the best remembered. But back then, the reaction of many financial experts was to point out the deficiencies of SEC oversight and the weaknesses of the American GAAP accounting rules. The suggested answer was to seriously improve SEC oversight and adopt international IAS standards for accounting.

Instead we got SOX, an only too typically American solution, which puts its faith in forms and auditing. I think at the root of this is the Protestant mindset brought along by the Pilgrim Fathers, which insists that if something is printed on paper it must be true. It is the same mindset that requires travellers to the USA to confirm in writing that they are not terrorists.

And we got -- yes! -- another big financial crisis, caused by lax SEC oversight and creative financial practices. Well, even bigger and badder, if that helps.

Some people never learn...