While I agree that the Printed gun is nowhere near the quality of a real gun and that regulating 3D printers is putting the cart way before the horse, To Play Devil's advocate I can see a use for it in the criminal world.
Organized crime could easily afford a $50,000 printer, and if that printer can produce hundreds of short range assassination weapons that can be thrown into a fire afterwards leaving no weapon trail to trace short of the bullet cartridge (which could be easily taken out of the gun and destroyed by other means) and a nail, it might be worth it.
I have a Samsung Chromebook and frankly, they are great for someone that just wants to check email and the web without worrying about viruses or tablet browser issues (such as flash or mobile site issues) but there are some things that make them a near impossible sell to people such as seniors.
1) Printing. I'd have sold 100+ chromebooks by now if they could plug in a USB printer and print out of the box. Google Cloud Print simply doesn't cut it here. Without a Cloud enabled printer, you're still tied to a PC.
2) Price. Try selling someone who is not computer savvy a $250 web browser. Seriously try it. In fact. Here's your two laptops. (I'll save your sanity and not dare mention the Chromebook Pixel).
I guess you could start with the chromebook is going to be faster with no viruses, but they're going to ask you about printing, and if it plays their old games, ETC...
What also should be said is that they are supposedly going to update the suite regularly, and all cloud users get the latest versions.
Pretty much, if you have to have the Master Collection, and were obsessive compulsive about having the latest version of it, then this is your dream come true. Otherwise you're getting screwed.
About the only system I've seen where I would Say DRM works would be in a corporate environment to track and protect documents.
Both Adobe and Microsoft have a Good DRM system that uses Active Directories to control who can open, edit, copy and print documents from Acrobat and Office files. I've seen it in action and it's pretty secure as an added protection on top of an encrypted file system.
The biggest problem was that employees couldn't work on a document from home on their personal machines, but then again that was the point, and there was other options in place to allow work from home (they were using Citrix for virtual remote desktops that worked well for their needs).
One thing I always admired about IBM Servers is that IBM would support the things practically forever as long as you kept a service contract on it. I highly doubt Lenovo will support a server for 10+ years.
My guess it's more the vendor wanting to get a few more scare sales of Windows 7
Back to the GP. In one recent case. Where I currently work we were buying a few Lenovo ThinkCenter All in one PC's of one of our clients. My biggest problem is that I Couldn't get the systems with Windows 8. All of the systems came with Windows 7 installed and came with a Windows 8 install kit that would basically wipe the drive clean, reinstall the factory partitions and install a completely new Factory Windows 8 environment. Not that big of a pain but it cost another hour that I could have used setting up the systems on site.
If you're working for a company thats buying roughly $1,000,000+ of hardware yearly and don't have a Microsoft Volume license to put whatever OS you want on the thing, let alone not making up your own customized OS image for your companies needs, then Windows 8 is the least of your problems.
If you can't get an OEM manufacture to build your laptops with windows 7, then you're either buying the wrong laptop, or you need a new OEM Company sales rep. Hell I didn't even try and found a Lenovo T430S with an i7 and windows 7 Pro on their consumer site. Lenovo Configure To Order should be no problem with a 1000+ order especially since Microsoft has not even announced an end of sales date for windows 7. (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/products/lifecycle)
Frankly, I lost a lot of respect for CNN when they turned CNN Headline News, arguably the only place in the US where you could get national news without spin, and turned it into E! News.
I recently had a job change a few months ago, and at my current job we have been using ESET NOD32 Antivirus Business Edition 4 (I'd like to move to the latest version, but Labtech is keeping us on 4)
From my Experience, ESET does do a pretty good job detecting PUPS, but in our console, when we look at the threat log, it constantly says "unable to clean" I'm sure it's just a setting wrong in the policy but i'm still learning the console since my previous employer used Sophos.
I noticed that ESET has a Rogue application remover. I'll have to give it a try on my next clean session and see how well it does. I know from experience that the only thing I've found that Consistently removes these applications is ADWCleaner and the Junkware Removal Tool, Just about everyone else's utility or scanner either just finds cookies or finds nothing.
Can Someone explain to me why Yontoo is detected on the Mac Platform but on Windows it's totally ok.
While we're at it, why are any of these still not detected by any malware scanner. Even as a Potentially Unwanted Program? I'm sure just about anything listed here does a lot more malicious stuff than anything spyware like Gator ever did.
Anything from Conduitt Anything from Mindspark Interactive myfuncards arcadecandy arcadeweb funweb freeze.com pricegong getsavin coupon wonderland fantistigames big fish games quiklinkx defaulttab mywebsearch we care ASCPA Reminder (my personal favorite. When you uninstall it, it basically accuses you of wanting to kill puppies.) shop to win inbox toolbar anything from Crawler 24x7 help blekko dealply ETC
Most of the above either popup ads, install, or trick users into installing more junk like registry scanners, fake flash players and the like. Yet almost no scanner I've found short of JRT or ADWcleaner gets rid of these things.
It's about time these AV companies wake the heck up and realize that Spyware is back disguising itself as adware and is more prevalent than ever,
1) Limit the number of activations per serial to 1 activation per day. If serials will be tied to multiple installs, tie that limit to that amount (IE a Key for 100 users will allow 100 activations a day) and monitor keys for statistically blatant abuse (IE this 50 use key had 100,000 attempts today). No one will legitimately run into these limits unless their hobby is installing software.
2) have a grace period to phone home if they put a legit key in so they can install without issue if the phone home server is down or they hit the daily activation limit or something. If you have a trial version, say 30 days. make the grace period to phone home 30 days. Do not pester the user about phoning home until they are close to the trial period expiring, say 7 days before the 30 days expire.
3) Have an exit plan. either remove the Check on the last version you release or after a certain amount of time passes (say 5 years) let the software work with a legit key without phoning home (so you don't have to maintain a server if the software goes abandoned for some reason).
and finally.
4) Expect piracy, Especially if it becomes popular. Someone will either release a keygen or crack out the compliance checks on your executable. Piracy is a constant. Adding more Checks that get in the way of your users will just shun legitimate sales while not doing any damage to pirates. Always treat DRM as a way to slow piracy rather than stopping it, and treat the customer as innocent until proven guilty instead of the other way around like most other software firms do.
While I'm not a big fan of the new keyboards per se, I will say one thing about them vs the older keyboards.
The Keys on them are rugged.
We were constantly replacing keys on the older style keyboards. They were constantly falling off, or people would accidently pop them off if they had long fingernails. When we replaced some of our systems with Thinkpad Edges, the keyboard issues were gone. The only issue we ever saw with them was when someone spilled something on them.
Although I will say that not much else fared better on the Edge systems. They were obviously consumer laptops with a Thinkpad logo on them. They had shiny top covers that looked dull after only a month. Most of them after a year you could crash simply by flexing the case too much, and they had Hard drive failure after hard drive failure because they didn't have any sort of shock absorption except for the airbag protection that the older Thinkpads had.
The key word here is "They sold the ads in-house" Most ad blockers will not block in house ads since most of the ad lists target the big players (google, adchoices, ETC)
This is Destructoid. They should have no problem getting advertisers lined up for an in house system. At least it will be their fault instead of their ad partner when they infect their viewers, and once that reality sinks in, they might be less inclined to accept active content and focus on safer alternatives such as animated gif's or text based ads instead of HTML5 or Flash.
As for me with ads, I Use adblockplus with the non-obtrusive advertising turned on. Especially when Ads are more Virulent than Pornbut at least the good ads get through.
At $200-250 dollars it's an decent sell to people who just want to go online using a full web featured web browser to shop or check e-mail and don't want to deal with the usual nuances of Computers such as viruses, OS or Application Patches, hardware crashes or the like.
At $450-500 Dollars, its a hard sell because at that price Android tablets start to look more promising, but even so, the Chromebooks in this price range have overkill performance considering it's just a web browser.
At $1200-1400 dollars, it's unsellable. Only the most dedicated Google snob is going to come remotely near this thing. Especially when you can get similar hardware specs minus the HD display and much more capable OS'es for a hell of a lot less.
Paying $1200 for a web browser is just plain "light money on fire" stupid, especially when the other cheaper alternatives are just as good at it at half the cost.
Don't forget, they like calling anyone who likes Win8 or Surface Pro a MS Marketing Shill.
Frankly, the Surface Pro is one of the most powerful tablets for the price. Especially considering it has a Wacom Digitizer that's close to Cintiq level specs. Frankly, I could care less about three hour battery life, or two pound weight if it does absolutely everything my desktop can do with little to no compromise. And as for Windows 8, if it drives you so nuts, you could wipe the drive, turn off EFI and install whatever OS you want on the thing.
I just find it interesting that people bashed the Surface RT because it didn't have Desktop Specs, and now they're bashing the Surface Pro because it doesn't have Tablet Specs.
1) Buy the laptop you want with Win8 on it. 2) Download Classic Shell
The only big interface change is the Metro Start Menu. everything else in desktop mode is what you know from Windows 7. If you don't want to deal with Metro, Classic shell will get rid of that for you.
The above illustrates one of the biggest problems with windows 8, and shows how Microsoft Both took a step forward and a step back.
1) There is no tutorial of any kind: The last big Interface change (windows 95) had tutorials all over the place and were displayed prominently when you first turned on the PC. In windows 8 they didn't do this at all and just expected people to just figure out the gestures and the start menu. Just a simple App that walks you through the gesturing would have been nice.
2) Removal or depreciation of older features or designs: The Biggest Example of this is Media Center. If someone bought Win8 Pro, which is at the same price as Win7 Pro. It should at the very least support the same features and codecs. Not including Media center and making it a $10 add is just plain stupid. (At least they're giving it away till the end of the month but then all the keys expire after the 31st. Hope I never have to re install).
Also not having any sort of Start menu is the other example. On 7 I can go all the way back to the Windows 95 Interface. On 8 it's Metro, Third Party Shell Extension, or Screwed. A Microsoft under Bill Gates would have never made this move, especially when Bill was all about backwards compatibility. Hell Even in 95 there was a way to use the Win3.1 interface.
There's a Lot of under the hood reasons to move to windows 8. It's a shame that Metro is one of the main reasons why you shouldn't.
On the other hand, no amount of Restricting (guns, Media, Video Games, ETC) is going to stop the Nut from Killing.
Not to go off on a tangent, but Everyone, Republicians and Democrats, are missing the Big Picture. Why These People do it. And the Answer Can be found in one word.
Fame
Consider the Following Two recent Suicide Incidents:
1) Aaron Swartz. Guy Hangs Himself in his apartment. News Media covers his death and moves on to Neal Armstrong and "All My Baby's Mommas". In two weeks, you won't here anything about that suicide other than what MIT figures out from it's investigation or on Tech Blogs.
2) Adam Lanza. Commits Suicide Via Gun After shooting up a School killing students. You'll be hearing this guys name for at least 10 years minimum.
The big issue here is if a nobody is thinking about committing suicide, and wants to go out as a somebody, all he has to do is strap on some Molotovs on his chest, run through a school chucking them in the middle of each classroom and blowing himself up in the cafeteria. One Crater and 10-30 Burned/Killed kids later, and his Smiling Face is all over the News Media for Months, Possibly Decades considering we're still Hearing about Harris and Klebold, yet most of you reading this couldn't name one victim of the Columbine Massacre off the top of your head unless you knew one.
Hell. There's even a Term for it. Aptly Called High Score. I'd bet Fox News would have a field day with that term if it hasn't already.
Blocking the plugin is the best thing that they can do. It will force Oracle to fix it sooner and keeps it's users protected. I wish IE and Chrome would jump on that bandwagon as well.
Frankly, in the consumer space. Unless you Know what a Creeper or Enderman is chances are you don't need Java. Ever. Just about every virus I see these days comes in from Java. These Virus kits barely bother with Flash or Reader anymore since Adobe changed their Update Policy, Even if the user has an older copy of Adobe Plugins and especially if Java's on the machine. Couple it with a Update system that for all intents and purposes is worthless and you got a Virus Writers Dream Apploader.
Simply put, The faster people understand that the only major Industry programming Java Internet Applets is Exploit Kit Developers that want to Hose your Computer, the Better.
Pick up a nice Thinkpad. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit. Especially the old ones.
Apparently, You haven't touched a Thinkpad Edge. Think Ideapad with a Thinkpad label. Nowhere Near an R series Replacement. I'm surprised that the E520's haven't been recalled yet for fire damage since the power plugs would break internally and short, causing the power supply and PC to smoke. Seen that three times now.
Although I do agree that the older series Laptops, (anything R61 and earlier), were a hell of a lot better than what they supply now, and i'm not sure about the T's but I'm sure they've been Cost Compromised.
I Second the Chromebook. They just work. They're absolutely easy to use, And have a much better browsing experience than any tablet on the market.
Hell, I'd recommend the Chromebox. Her Keyboard, mouse and monitor is probably still good and familiar to her, and is probably easier to read and use since the screen will be much larger
About the only problem with a Chromebook that she'll have is printing, and that could be solved with a Google Cloud Print ready printer hooked up to the network.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree that the Printed gun is nowhere near the quality of a real gun and that regulating 3D printers is putting the cart way before the horse, To Play Devil's advocate I can see a use for it in the criminal world.
Organized crime could easily afford a $50,000 printer, and if that printer can produce hundreds of short range assassination weapons that can be thrown into a fire afterwards leaving no weapon trail to trace short of the bullet cartridge (which could be easily taken out of the gun and destroyed by other means) and a nail, it might be worth it.
I have a Samsung Chromebook and frankly, they are great for someone that just wants to check email and the web without worrying about viruses or tablet browser issues (such as flash or mobile site issues) but there are some things that make them a near impossible sell to people such as seniors.
1) Printing. I'd have sold 100+ chromebooks by now if they could plug in a USB printer and print out of the box. Google Cloud Print simply doesn't cut it here. Without a Cloud enabled printer, you're still tied to a PC.
2) Price. Try selling someone who is not computer savvy a $250 web browser. Seriously try it. In fact. Here's your two laptops. (I'll save your sanity and not dare mention the Chromebook Pixel).
HP Windows 8 Notebook
HP Chromebook
I guess you could start with the chromebook is going to be faster with no viruses, but they're going to ask you about printing, and if it plays their old games, ETC...
What also should be said is that they are supposedly going to update the suite regularly, and all cloud users get the latest versions.
Pretty much, if you have to have the Master Collection, and were obsessive compulsive about having the latest version of it, then this is your dream come true. Otherwise you're getting screwed.
Every Time Footprints Up's a version, The Company gets bought out.
So far...
BMC
Numara
Unipress
Footprints Software
And I'm probably missing a company or two in there.
I'll debate that while New Coke didn't work out, the aftermath resulted in Coke classic dominating the cola wars with a solid lead for decades now.
If it wasn't for new Coke, Pepsi would have overtaken Coke in the mid 80's and never looked back.
Fiber would be nice and cheaper than full copper runs.
About the only system I've seen where I would Say DRM works would be in a corporate environment to track and protect documents.
Both Adobe and Microsoft have a Good DRM system that uses Active Directories to control who can open, edit, copy and print documents from Acrobat and Office files. I've seen it in action and it's pretty secure as an added protection on top of an encrypted file system.
The biggest problem was that employees couldn't work on a document from home on their personal machines, but then again that was the point, and there was other options in place to allow work from home (they were using Citrix for virtual remote desktops that worked well for their needs).
Yep.
One thing I always admired about IBM Servers is that IBM would support the things practically forever as long as you kept a service contract on it. I highly doubt Lenovo will support a server for 10+ years.
My guess it's more the vendor wanting to get a few more scare sales of Windows 7
Back to the GP. In one recent case. Where I currently work we were buying a few Lenovo ThinkCenter All in one PC's of one of our clients. My biggest problem is that I Couldn't get the systems with Windows 8. All of the systems came with Windows 7 installed and came with a Windows 8 install kit that would basically wipe the drive clean, reinstall the factory partitions and install a completely new Factory Windows 8 environment. Not that big of a pain but it cost another hour that I could have used setting up the systems on site.
If you're working for a company thats buying roughly $1,000,000+ of hardware yearly and don't have a Microsoft Volume license to put whatever OS you want on the thing, let alone not making up your own customized OS image for your companies needs, then Windows 8 is the least of your problems.
If you can't get an OEM manufacture to build your laptops with windows 7, then you're either buying the wrong laptop, or you need a new OEM Company sales rep. Hell I didn't even try and found a Lenovo T430S with an i7 and windows 7 Pro on their consumer site. Lenovo Configure To Order should be no problem with a 1000+ order especially since Microsoft has not even announced an end of sales date for windows 7. (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/products/lifecycle)
Frankly, I lost a lot of respect for CNN when they turned CNN Headline News, arguably the only place in the US where you could get national news without spin, and turned it into E! News.
My guess is that you work for ESET.
I recently had a job change a few months ago, and at my current job we have been using ESET NOD32 Antivirus Business Edition 4 (I'd like to move to the latest version, but Labtech is keeping us on 4)
From my Experience, ESET does do a pretty good job detecting PUPS, but in our console, when we look at the threat log, it constantly says "unable to clean" I'm sure it's just a setting wrong in the policy but i'm still learning the console since my previous employer used Sophos.
I noticed that ESET has a Rogue application remover. I'll have to give it a try on my next clean session and see how well it does. I know from experience that the only thing I've found that Consistently removes these applications is ADWCleaner and the Junkware Removal Tool, Just about everyone else's utility or scanner either just finds cookies or finds nothing.
Can Someone explain to me why Yontoo is detected on the Mac Platform but on Windows it's totally ok.
While we're at it, why are any of these still not detected by any malware scanner. Even as a Potentially Unwanted Program? I'm sure just about anything listed here does a lot more malicious stuff than anything spyware like Gator ever did.
Anything from Conduitt
Anything from Mindspark Interactive
myfuncards
arcadecandy
arcadeweb
funweb
freeze.com
pricegong
getsavin
coupon wonderland
fantistigames
big fish games
quiklinkx
defaulttab
mywebsearch
we care ASCPA Reminder (my personal favorite. When you uninstall it, it basically accuses you of wanting to kill puppies.)
shop to win
inbox toolbar
anything from Crawler
24x7 help
blekko
dealply
ETC
Most of the above either popup ads, install, or trick users into installing more junk like registry scanners, fake flash players and the like. Yet almost no scanner I've found short of JRT or ADWcleaner gets rid of these things.
It's about time these AV companies wake the heck up and realize that Spyware is back disguising itself as adware and is more prevalent than ever,
Some other notes to consider:
1) Limit the number of activations per serial to 1 activation per day. If serials will be tied to multiple installs, tie that limit to that amount (IE a Key for 100 users will allow 100 activations a day) and monitor keys for statistically blatant abuse (IE this 50 use key had 100,000 attempts today). No one will legitimately run into these limits unless their hobby is installing software.
2) have a grace period to phone home if they put a legit key in so they can install without issue if the phone home server is down or they hit the daily activation limit or something. If you have a trial version, say 30 days. make the grace period to phone home 30 days. Do not pester the user about phoning home until they are close to the trial period expiring, say 7 days before the 30 days expire.
3) Have an exit plan. either remove the Check on the last version you release or after a certain amount of time passes (say 5 years) let the software work with a legit key without phoning home (so you don't have to maintain a server if the software goes abandoned for some reason).
and finally.
4) Expect piracy, Especially if it becomes popular. Someone will either release a keygen or crack out the compliance checks on your executable. Piracy is a constant. Adding more Checks that get in the way of your users will just shun legitimate sales while not doing any damage to pirates. Always treat DRM as a way to slow piracy rather than stopping it, and treat the customer as innocent until proven guilty instead of the other way around like most other software firms do.
While I'm not a big fan of the new keyboards per se, I will say one thing about them vs the older keyboards.
The Keys on them are rugged.
We were constantly replacing keys on the older style keyboards. They were constantly falling off, or people would accidently pop them off if they had long fingernails. When we replaced some of our systems with Thinkpad Edges, the keyboard issues were gone. The only issue we ever saw with them was when someone spilled something on them.
Although I will say that not much else fared better on the Edge systems. They were obviously consumer laptops with a Thinkpad logo on them. They had shiny top covers that looked dull after only a month. Most of them after a year you could crash simply by flexing the case too much, and they had Hard drive failure after hard drive failure because they didn't have any sort of shock absorption except for the airbag protection that the older Thinkpads had.
The key word here is "They sold the ads in-house" Most ad blockers will not block in house ads since most of the ad lists target the big players (google, adchoices, ETC)
This is Destructoid. They should have no problem getting advertisers lined up for an in house system. At least it will be their fault instead of their ad partner when they infect their viewers, and once that reality sinks in, they might be less inclined to accept active content and focus on safer alternatives such as animated gif's or text based ads instead of HTML5 or Flash.
As for me with ads, I Use adblockplus with the non-obtrusive advertising turned on. Especially when Ads are more Virulent than Pornbut at least the good ads get through.
you're looking at the hardware. Not the OS.
ChromeOS is a Web Browser.
At $200-250 dollars it's an decent sell to people who just want to go online using a full web featured web browser to shop or check e-mail and don't want to deal with the usual nuances of Computers such as viruses, OS or Application Patches, hardware crashes or the like.
At $450-500 Dollars, its a hard sell because at that price Android tablets start to look more promising, but even so, the Chromebooks in this price range have overkill performance considering it's just a web browser.
At $1200-1400 dollars, it's unsellable. Only the most dedicated Google snob is going to come remotely near this thing. Especially when you can get similar hardware specs minus the HD display and much more capable OS'es for a hell of a lot less.
Paying $1200 for a web browser is just plain "light money on fire" stupid, especially when the other cheaper alternatives are just as good at it at half the cost.
Don't forget, they like calling anyone who likes Win8 or Surface Pro a MS Marketing Shill.
Frankly, the Surface Pro is one of the most powerful tablets for the price. Especially considering it has a Wacom Digitizer that's close to Cintiq level specs. Frankly, I could care less about three hour battery life, or two pound weight if it does absolutely everything my desktop can do with little to no compromise. And as for Windows 8, if it drives you so nuts, you could wipe the drive, turn off EFI and install whatever OS you want on the thing.
I just find it interesting that people bashed the Surface RT because it didn't have Desktop Specs, and now they're bashing the Surface Pro because it doesn't have Tablet Specs.
1) Buy the laptop you want with Win8 on it.
2) Download Classic Shell
The only big interface change is the Metro Start Menu. everything else in desktop mode is what you know from Windows 7. If you don't want to deal with Metro, Classic shell will get rid of that for you.
The above illustrates one of the biggest problems with windows 8, and shows how Microsoft Both took a step forward and a step back.
1) There is no tutorial of any kind: The last big Interface change (windows 95) had tutorials all over the place and were displayed prominently when you first turned on the PC. In windows 8 they didn't do this at all and just expected people to just figure out the gestures and the start menu. Just a simple App that walks you through the gesturing would have been nice.
2) Removal or depreciation of older features or designs: The Biggest Example of this is Media Center. If someone bought Win8 Pro, which is at the same price as Win7 Pro. It should at the very least support the same features and codecs. Not including Media center and making it a $10 add is just plain stupid. (At least they're giving it away till the end of the month but then all the keys expire after the 31st. Hope I never have to re install).
Also not having any sort of Start menu is the other example. On 7 I can go all the way back to the Windows 95 Interface. On 8 it's Metro, Third Party Shell Extension, or Screwed. A Microsoft under Bill Gates would have never made this move, especially when Bill was all about backwards compatibility. Hell Even in 95 there was a way to use the Win3.1 interface.
There's a Lot of under the hood reasons to move to windows 8. It's a shame that Metro is one of the main reasons why you shouldn't.
http://xkcd.com/932/
On the other hand, no amount of Restricting (guns, Media, Video Games, ETC) is going to stop the Nut from Killing.
Not to go off on a tangent, but Everyone, Republicians and Democrats, are missing the Big Picture. Why These People do it. And the Answer Can be found in one word.
Fame
Consider the Following Two recent Suicide Incidents:
1) Aaron Swartz. Guy Hangs Himself in his apartment. News Media covers his death and moves on to Neal Armstrong and "All My Baby's Mommas". In two weeks, you won't here anything about that suicide other than what MIT figures out from it's investigation or on Tech Blogs.
2) Adam Lanza. Commits Suicide Via Gun After shooting up a School killing students. You'll be hearing this guys name for at least 10 years minimum.
The big issue here is if a nobody is thinking about committing suicide, and wants to go out as a somebody, all he has to do is strap on some Molotovs on his chest, run through a school chucking them in the middle of each classroom and blowing himself up in the cafeteria. One Crater and 10-30 Burned/Killed kids later, and his Smiling Face is all over the News Media for Months, Possibly Decades considering we're still Hearing about Harris and Klebold, yet most of you reading this couldn't name one victim of the Columbine Massacre off the top of your head unless you knew one.
Hell. There's even a Term for it. Aptly Called High Score. I'd bet Fox News would have a field day with that term if it hasn't already.
Blocking the plugin is the best thing that they can do. It will force Oracle to fix it sooner and keeps it's users protected. I wish IE and Chrome would jump on that bandwagon as well.
Frankly, in the consumer space. Unless you Know what a Creeper or Enderman is chances are you don't need Java. Ever. Just about every virus I see these days comes in from Java. These Virus kits barely bother with Flash or Reader anymore since Adobe changed their Update Policy, Even if the user has an older copy of Adobe Plugins and especially if Java's on the machine. Couple it with a Update system that for all intents and purposes is worthless and you got a Virus Writers Dream Apploader.
Simply put, The faster people understand that the only major Industry programming Java Internet Applets is Exploit Kit Developers that want to Hose your Computer, the Better.
Pick up a nice Thinkpad. It does not feel like a cheap piece of shit. Especially the old ones.
Apparently, You haven't touched a Thinkpad Edge. Think Ideapad with a Thinkpad label. Nowhere Near an R series Replacement. I'm surprised that the E520's haven't been recalled yet for fire damage since the power plugs would break internally and short, causing the power supply and PC to smoke. Seen that three times now.
Although I do agree that the older series Laptops, (anything R61 and earlier), were a hell of a lot better than what they supply now, and i'm not sure about the T's but I'm sure they've been Cost Compromised.
I Second the Chromebook. They just work. They're absolutely easy to use, And have a much better browsing experience than any tablet on the market.
Hell, I'd recommend the Chromebox. Her Keyboard, mouse and monitor is probably still good and familiar to her, and is probably easier to read and use since the screen will be much larger
About the only problem with a Chromebook that she'll have is printing, and that could be solved with a Google Cloud Print ready printer hooked up to the network.