I was recently asked by a local village shop to help because they were having a problem with their computer, and they know I have "something to do with computers".

The problem turned out to be a software package which had decided not to launch, but was not giving much away in the error message. Eventually we found a phone number for a support desk for the package, and the first question the technician asked was which version of Internet Explorer was on the PC. On replying IE7, he asked me to remove it.

Ah, the IE7 incompatibility problem, I said. Yes, he replied, we have not upgraded our software yet Ð we normally just disable Windows Automatic Updates. The shopkeeper, on hearing me mention Windows Updates, said he had applied the updates that morning, because he knew that was good practice. The technician did some more maintenance via a remote session, and disabled Windows Automatic Updates.
So, for the right reasons, the shopkeeper was still inconvenienced. But the internet has another unknown number of insecure PCs  because of deliberate bad practice.

Al Lawrence