Posted on 01/24/2007 6:33:13 PM PST by Swordmaker
I received a few e-mails over the weekend from readers who took issue with advice I recently gave to a Web chat participant who asked what he should do to help an elderly friend who was having PC trouble. The questioner said the woman knew nothing about computers and that her Windows machine was besieged with pop-up advertisements.
I probably get two or three variations on this question in the course of each Web chat, and I usually ignore them in favor of more targeted questions because of the difficulty in diagnosing what precisely may be ailing the questioner's computer.
In this case, I bit, and here's what I recommended: "Yes. You can spend many, many hours trying to diagnose the problem, or you can spend perhaps a bit less time backing up any documents and pictures she'd like to keep and then re-installing the operating system."
One reader wrote in to say he thought my advice was jumping-the-gun; another called it "overkill" and said I should have referred the questioner to one of the myriad online forums that try to help people in such situations.
I read both comments several times and after much reflection came to the conclusion that I would give that same advice again to anyone else who asked. But I also decided that I could have offered a bit more of my rationale behind my recommendation, and a bit more instruction on how to do it.
Allow me to explain, but with a caveat: This post represents the fruit of much personal reflection onthe topic. After reading this entire entry, I hope some readers may look at the appearance of problems on their Windows machines (security related or not) as an opportunity to start fresh and set up their computers to block most online threats.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.washingtonpost.com ...
I agree completely. A lot of cases of adware and spyware that are killing performance can be fixed for short money, but you are right on about knowing when to cut your losses.
I could certainly learn how to do it if I needed to, but I don't want to waste one minute dealing with that garbage.
You Windows guys can keep all of your worms, viruses, spyware and kiddie porn to yourselves. We don't want it in the Mac community.
FreedomGuru looked like a typical linux driveby to me...I think he meant he built that dune buggy he was in himself.
Any idea whether Leopard will run on a 1 Ghz PowerPC G4 eMac with 768 MB SDRAM (running OS 10.4.8 now)?
Yes... but if we tell you we'll have to kill you. Actually, extrapolating from several things... the fact that Tiger (X.4.8 runs well on a 400MHz G3 with 384Megs, the iPhone is running OSX Leopard, and the observation that every upgrade of OS X has run faster on the same hardware than the previous version... I think it will run fine.
Amen to that.
I have a number of folks that I do such admin work for and I find they are more than willing to spend the money (hell...they've GOT it) on a new machine when the old one takes a voltage spike, gets slogged with malware and crud or whatever.
They are even happier when I tell them I'll set up their old HDD as a slave backup unit. I then do snapshots as backups for them on a regular basis (Logmein is a godsend) and all their stuff is safe and recoverable.
Most Mac users don't need to know...it isn't an issue or not as great of an issue. :D
I think it would work okay on that machine, but a memory upgrade to 1GB would improve performance.
but, with the mac you don't get to spend time tweaking and overclocking... :( whats the fun in that?
Geeze, why are Mac users so touchy, it was obviously an inter-platform joke.
Of course, PC users are more likely to know how to get rid of stuff and use edlin and stuff like that then Mac users but so what? Mac users are more likely to know how to be smug and annoying.
Everything evens out.
Be well. Be happy! :)
For whatever reason as I have stated on other threads, medical software tends to be some of the sloppiest programs on the market. They seem to be a hastily cobbled together mess that work by no small miracle, and are never more than the width of a human hair away from total collapse. These software companies probably started convulsing uncontrollably when they read the HIPPA regs. Due to some previous threads about this same topic, I will be watching out for this very thing when we do the security assessment for a medical group here in a few weeks.
Oh sure it was.
Not even enough intellectual honesty to be a man about it and come out and stand by what one really thinks, which is evident.
"Blah blah blah. I was only kidding."
What a a bunch of spineless pussies.
We get to be productive with what we have... not trying to squeeze another infinitesimal fraction of a Megahertz out of the processor with out compromising the integrity of the data being processed. We get to spend our time Freeping, surfing the web, and just enjoying ourselves with non-geeky things. Now THAT's fun!
Reading the comments below Krebs blog is very interesting.
Mac users are people who just want to be able to sit down at the computer and actually start using it. Windows users have to invest a lot of time in security and maintenance to make that happen, while Linux fans seldom actually get to use the computer at all - as soon as they get enough device drivers downloaded off obscure Russian hacker sites to make their system bootable, they're off chasing the next distro de jour.
I at least give it a once over with Spybot and if it is still bad afterwards than I will do the reinstall. What is nasty is the lack of backing data up as the user goes. Thus leaving poor hapless me to dig around to make sure I get everything that is, like you said, spread out from one corner to the other. You don't know how many times I come accross PCs that the user saved files like .doc and .xls in the windows directory, etc. WTH is it doing there!
Unfortunately, I do know. I've had the same experience. Most hapless PC users haven't the foggiest idea why there was a "My documents" folder and a "My Briefcase" folder on the desktop or in the Start menu.
Even more unfortunately, many Windows developers haven't the foggiest idea either, placing their data files where they are convenient for THEM to find while they are doing the development and never bothering to move them out of the App's folder when they publish!
Another fun thing is the multiple copies of the same document in various locations with differing or the same creation date... trying to find which one is the most current across multiple directories is not fun.
Sometimes I have to spend an hour or two looking for user files in unusual places because the owner says "Where's my letters to Aunt Ginny folder? I don't see it?"
Backing up user data on a Mac is as easy as dragging the User's home directory to another drive, thumb drive (if big enough) or burning a copy to a DVD or CD.
I think the main thing is, Unix makes Windows seem like a Mac. I like to play games. I considered buying a Mac a few years ago when Jobs promised more support for developers but it was just another empty promise.
Now that Mac's are pretty much PC's, PC's don't really support games so maybe it's time to buy a chess board. I wonder what OS those run under these days. I really, really hope it's not UNIX. Battle Chess was pretty fun but that was DOS.
The main reason viruses aren't a problem for Linux is it's not really a usable system.
And the main reason they aren't a problem for Mac's is hardly anybody owns a Mac.
How often to maladjusted egomaniacs attack the little guy? Oh, sure, they go after the occasional windmill but only because they think they are a giant.
Not that I'm all that happy with MS but for years they've had games and programs that run on their system.
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