TV. the andromeda strain

a couple weeks ago there was a two part mini series on a&e called 'the andromeda strain'. i was quite excited to see this. ive been a big fan of this story for a while, and was eager to see how they would update it.
its based on an old book by michael crichton, the author of 'jurassic park' and 'sphere'. i read the book years ago back when i was in high school and really loved it. i also discovered soon after that there was an old movie based on the book that came out in 1971. the story itself is very technology based, so it is very dated.
the story goes like this: a satellite crashes down in a small utah town and something inside it kills almost everybody in the town. an old man and a baby live, but everyone else exposed to it dies. its up to a group of scientists and military men to try and make sense of it and figure out what should be done. there is a lot of discussion about what the virus is and how we can get rid of it before it effects anyone else. its a very intriguing premise and tensely written. the old movie did a pretty good job of portraying the story and the race to figure out what happened, but a lot of technology and how we look at viruses has changed since the early seventies, so it was certainly time to update the story.
the mini series was pretty good, they did a nice job of keeping all the basic elements but modernizing it to todays scientific and political climate. the story still clips along at a good pace, though the inclusion of a rogue journalist seemed a bit unnecessary. also, they seemed to have dumbed it down from it original level. in the book and old movie there is a real sense of trying to learn what it is and examining all options. it really seemed like the scientists were intelligent people logically working through the situation. on this version they just seem to make crazy jumps in logic and then go with it, and somehow each jump is exactly correct. also, they changed the ending quite a bit, which was a disappointment. one of the great things about crichtons books is that he rarely drops the ball with the ending (steven king could learn a lot from this guy...) but they always seem to change it when they turn it into a film (dont even get me started on how crappy the altered ending was for 'the sphere'...)