The Cost of Computer Naivete

wiredog writes "What happens when you put an unprotected Windows 98 box on a broadband connection? Two perspectives from two reporters for the Washington Post (frr,yyy): The User's " an odyssey that has taken $800 and roughly 48 man-hours over nearly three weeks" and Digital Doctor's "Her PC was in such bad shape, it required 10 1/2 hours of surgery to restore it to working condition.""

Comments

Linux r00lZ

[duffbeer703]

The Linux fanboyism on this site is sickening.

Try sticking an unpatched Red Hat 6 box from 1998/9 on the public internet and see how many minutes it takes to be totally rooted.

Then you can put "R3dh/\7 s\_/X04z" in your sig.

Re:And I hope she buys a Mac next time

[dave420]

"functions better, works better, and breaks much more rarely" - that's your opinion. I could voice my opinion, which is that it would cost a lot more, function less, work less and break more. And if she likes playing games, forget it.

People don't want to buy hardware/software because of ideological reasons. They want what can do the job. A PC and XP does the job, and is cheaper than a mac. By far. As for Linux? Sure. If the user likes compiling or having to find "alternatives" for everything they want to do.

I'm not having a go at anyone, or saying anything trollish. Let's just stop speaking out of our collective asses.

Will the proles ever learn?

[cortana]

I just hope she remembers the name of the company who got her into all this shit ("Microsoft") and buys a Mac next time. Of course she probably ponied up another $2000 for a brand new computer running Microsoft Windows XP, without a second thought.

Generic reply

[phiwum]

Ten and a half hours? What an idiot. Why, I would have made her buy two new computers, a firewall, a new operating system and a shotgun, installed XP and FreeBSD before lunch and still charged her my usual billable rate, which is $70 gajillion.

Re:To be fair to Microsoft

[maximilln]

2000 and XP have netstat. A five-second check would save you from looking like a pro linux homeboi

Oh yeah? And where's the PID tracking so that you know which applications are making those connections?

WTF??

[sjwt]

I beg your god damm parden??

$800??
10 1/2 hours of work??

lets see..

10am arive
10:05 boot into safe mode and run anit virus
10:45 (assumming major problems), run spyware removela.
11:30 (assumming major problems) virus free, spyware free, install zone alarm.
12:30 (assuming major problems, computers a ok.

at the worst it being 98, reinstall over its self, and remove a few programs and reinstall them..

that woudl add 2 more hours at the most.

Thats 4 1/2 hours, if your being riped off.

buying more ram?? WTF??

I meen comeon..
Ive restored a 20 gig HD after a major FAT crash useing an old verry slow resore program(in fact twice as there where two ways to recover files and some i had to do the second way) and reupdated and installed all my programs and games in less time..

I also had the same thing happen to my comptuer jsut hte other day when i was installing doom3, opps i got borde and was jsut surfing around and picked up a virus and about 12 malware programs (ok so every now and then i get borde see a file in a newsgroup and go hmmm freeporn.scr wonder how much dammage this can do)..

I still managed to install doom3, reboot 10 odd times trying to get a free virus prgram installed
reboot 10 odd times agine get ad aware up and runing, reboot and instlall zonealarm, trouble shoot the new video card and monitor i added and play doom3 for about 10 mins in the 2 hours i had.

for $800(im assuming US hear) I would of been able to do all that, and get the ssytem close to doom3 specs. Or hey buy a brand new one!!