Thousands of Australians order Microsoft's free CD.

Thousands of Australian Windows users took up Microsoft's offer of a free update CD in the two weeks following its release on 17 February. The Windows Security Update CD is a disc with all critical updates released through October 2003 for various Windows versions. Since the release Australian customers had ordered several thousand copies nationwide, said Danny Beck, senior product marketing manager for Windows desktop.

Normally, Windows users must download security patches and fixes from Microsoft's Windows Update site. The size of these fixes meant this was not only a time-consuming process but a costly one, particularly for people with slow Internet connection speeds.

Initially, Microsoft said the CD would apply only to XP users, but the CD now covers all flavours of Windows. "Our research indicates that the majority of Internet users in Australia connect to the Internet via a dialup connection," Beck said. "Many of these customers are still running Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE."

The Windows Security Update can be obtained by going to www.microsoft.com/ australia/security.