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German Ministry of Education Throws Away PCs For 190,000 € Due To Infection

Posted by Unknown on from the burn-it-with-fire dept.

An anonymous reader writes "German IT magazine Heise reports (original in German) that the Ministry of Education in Schwerin had a Conficker virus infection on 170 machines, that was dealt with by simply throwing them on the trash. Other German authorities have now decided that 'the approach taken is not up to the principle of efficiency and economy' and that the 187,300 Euro invested in this radical form of virus removal were inappropriate. The ministry had earlier estimated the cost of cleaning their desktops and servers by more conventional means to 130,000 Euro."

3 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Money well spent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If its 130,000 euros to fix a virus infection and 187300 to upgrade AND fix the virus infection, then you may as well upgrade.

    The real problem here is the 130,000 euros to fix a virus infection.

  2. They ain't dumb by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the idiots are dumb enough to throw out new PCs because of a virus infection, they most certainly are too dumb to install anything but Windows

    I don't think that they are dumb

    Actually, they are smart

    1. It ain't their money --- the money is from the gummint

    2. By throwing the thing away they save all the effort to reformat the disk and to re-install the Windows OS, plus softwares

    3. With the computer dumped, they will get to enjoy newer computers --- again, the money came from the gummint

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  3. Re:Far cheaper options by RabidReindeer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ps. I doubt your secretary can tell which OS they're running in the first place

    Then you're an idiot. Just because someone doesn't understand technology doesn't mean they don't know when their menu items are in different places or when the nice obvious icon they had becomes some in-joke about Klingons.

    secretary: OK. so what do you mean that "this new ribbon bar is all you need"? Where'd my "print" menu go???