Family tech support

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

Daughter.1 has picked up a nasty, that wants her to pay for an antivirus, 
and keeps nagging at her. She already had Norton, but that doesn't seem to 
want to know. I don't know if she's updated it - probably not.

I didn't fancy wrestling with the malware to try to remove it, or go back 
to some previous checkpoint (there probably isn't one).

I offered her two solutions.

1) reinstall XP. She doesn't have the CDs (I don't think they came with 
the computer). I suspect you can't buy XP now. Vista will cost her about a 
hundred pounds, and then she'll need to buy a new word processor, I'd 
guess. Probably another hundred or two. 

I suspect that a new laptop would be cheaper. I remember when we used to 
wonder if a virus could actually destroy the hardware. Well, you don't 
need to when it's cheaper to buy a new computer than to get rid of the 
virus.

2) I install Linux. Zero cost, and she most likely won't ever see another 
malware.



It's a no-brainer, really.


Do the folks at MS realise what this is doing to them?

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