The kiosks at heathrow



  • While transitting through London Heathrow airport a few days ago, I logged on to the net from one of the many (incredibly expensive) internet kiosks at their departure lounges.

    After 11-12 minutes of using it, it came crashing down. Turned out the kiosks were running Windows 2000 (ok..) and this particular one was somehow infected with the Blaster virus (I think). I got the "System is shutting down in 1 min" window before it shut down, and retstarted, going through bios and Win2k boot screen etc. I thought it was funny. These kiosks are built with a trackwheel and metal keyboard, coin slot etc... one would expect them to be more stable.

    A similar thing happened once to me at a German bank's money transfer kiosk. While entering the details, it briefly flashed the green Windows NT background and Start menu, before switching back to the (fullscreen) window with the transfer form.

    I have a couple of snaps of the Heathrow kiosk, will submit for next month's potpourri.

    And once again, the forum software f**ks up the line breaks...........


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