The customer support software was failing because it couldn't find astandard Microsoft ActiveX control which ships with Windows. My impressionis that the Windows operating system in control of a display unit had somehow been corrupted. Ironically this customer support package is designed to diagnose and fix these kinds of problems with home PCs. WhyDelta was running consumer-grade PCs for this application is bit hard for meto fathom.
You've really answered your own question... It is not if "Windows is up to snuff," it's "Are the companies deploying solutions up to snuff?"
PG Grade hardware is fine for this kind of application, but default, user-grade applications are not (if that is in fact what they are using-- the images are not clear enough to read.) And I'm not sure why you are saying "Windows failed" in a dedicated system... Their application failed. Two very different things... If you can't fathom why Delta would do this, why are you saying that it is a Windows problem?
If you ever fly out of E concourse in Salt Lake City, you'll certainly see similar problems on their gate arrival/departure status software... They simply reboot, you see the pretty Windows 95 (Yes, 95) clouds, and the system logs on to the network with a blank password and starts up the software again.
Similar operational/security problems would exist if they deployed half-baked solutions on any operating system... Calling this a "Windows failure" is not accurate or even helpful.
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