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Spyware Removal: Drop PC in Dumpster

Posted by timothy on from the baby-bathwater-makes-a-fine-soup dept.

morganx writes "The New York Times is reporting that some users prefer throwing out their PCs and buying new ones to actually removing their spyware. Does this mean lots of free hardware for the dumpster-divers among us?"

4 of 705 comments (clear)

  1. Solution: install more spyware by nokilli · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Or actually, malware is I guess what we should be calling it.

    There's malware out there that will reformat your hard drive, right?

    So maybe the best recommendation we can give these people is not to throw out their computers, but to try and have as much malware installed on their systems as possible, because eventually the situation repairs itself.

    And as a bonus, every time the hard drive gets wiped means they reach for the Windows Install CD. What better opportunity for Linux evangelization than at the point of operating system installation? What do they have to lose by trying Linux at this point?

    If we can see to it that enough of these Live/Install CD's are distributed en-masse, a la AOL, then the chances are good that at least some of these people will at least try installing Linux.

    OpenOffice, Evolution, the GiMP, and Firefox? For free? Without malware or the threat of same? A lot of people are going to say "Yes!" to that.

    --
    Why didn't you know?

  2. Are you kidding me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    How is it that the editors know less about what's on their site than someone like me who very rarely glances at the headlines?

  3. Re:Geek Squad by bani · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A most excellent recommendation indeed.

    If you're really ambitious, you could try This Mac.
    Beige box! Looks exactly like a wintel PC! Fool your friends!

    And if you need something portable, apple has a solution for you.

  4. Re:Cheaper? by Darby · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hey, while we're having free tech support day ;-)

    I have a Dell optiplex GX260. When I plug in a PCI video card, Linux immediately kernel panics. It's done it with 3 different video cards using SuSE, RedHat and Gentoo.

    Any ideas?