24th October 2001
Remember when you thought you were secure when you used the Windows Screen Saver password feature? Gone are those days, my friend. A quick reboot is really all it takes to get around that thing. Plus, anybody can delete PWL files from the DOS prompt. Is Windows XP better? Undoubtedly. You lock the workstation by doing a three-finger salute (CTRL+ALT+DEL) in Windows 2000 and NT. When the same keyboard combo is used in XP, you'll get the powerful Task Manager. Now, WINKEY+L will keep people from seeing what they shouldn't be seeing. I hope you didn't forget your password, though. Unlike older versions of Windows, you can't escape out of this dialog without knowing the magic word. Of course, you could also switch users at this point, provided you've set them up on the same machine. If you can't stand XP's cutesy Welcome screen, you can turn it off in the User Accounts Control Panel Applet. Sure, just "Change the way users log on or off." Ah, this thing's looking more and more like Windows 2000 every day.