[TriLUG] insane(?) MS rantings..

[gregbrown at mindspring.com]

I have seen something weird regarding Microsoft recently, but hopefully it's all in my head.  I have two laptops, one for work and a personal one which my wife and I use at home.  Our home network is connected via a cable modem and I block all incoming TCP packets with the sync bit set so I think I have a fairly decent firewall in place.  Outgoing, however, is unrestricted and running IP Masq.

On my work laptop I am being forced against my will off my old pop mail server to a MS Virus Exchance server.  I've fought this tooth and nail but, alas, I have lost to the battle so I cranked up Microsoft Outlook to configure it for Virus Exchange.

Low and behold once I started Outlook it prompted me to "register on-line".  I looked closer and sure enough it was Outlook 2002 (i.e. Outlook XP).  Since I did NOT upgrade the software I chalked it up to my doamin having done this to my automatically one morning when I wasn't paying attention.

It all would have ended there but last night I cranked up MS Outlook *for the first time* since I installed MS Office 2k along with Windows 2k Professional on my home laptop.  I was very suprised to see Outlook 2002 start up and demand that I register on-line.

Now, here is what I know about my home laptop:

1. I installed MS Windows 2000 Professional
2. I installed MS Office 2000
3. I DID NOT install Outlook 2002 (and neither did my wife)

So how did this come to pass?  What I am wondering is has anyone seen this happen on their home machines?  If so, how is MS doing this?

I debated not sending this out simply because it makes me sound like I'm not operating off a full deck but I did NOT upgrade my home machines to Outlook 2002.  I'm just wondering if anyone else with home machines with high-speed connections have seen anything like this. 

Scratching my head,

Greg