Last night we had some friends over for Hot Pot. Several of us are engineers of one type or another so it wasn’t long before talk turned to computers, Tablet PCs, and eventually frustrations with Windows and worries about viruses. A couple of them operate small businesses that run Windows systems exclusively–and they’ve each been hit by viruses or spyware–and spent many hours undoing the mess. It’s a big deal to them. Each is contemplating switching–one to Linux and one to Apple–because of the potential of lost productivity in the future. My take is that they don’t really want to switch. They simply want things to work and work dependably. Service Pack 2 may turn out to be a key turning point for them.