I understood that just fine. I guess you never change your own oil either...
You did not read my reply carefully enough. I said my mother could not possibly follow such arcane instructions. I can follow them perfectly well, and have in fact edited the Registry on my Windows machines numerous times. I've been into computers for thirty years, wrote my first program in Fortran on punch cards for a PDP-8, bought my first MS-DOS system in 1985, been running Windows since Version 2.0, so I know well enough how to clean up an infestation of spyware and viruses.
However, I no longer choose to do so, as my time is now valuable enough that the opportunity cost of spending an afternoon weeding out an infested Windows box is actually less than the cost of throwing it in a dumpster and buying a new machine. Any price differential between Macintosh and Windows machines vanishes in the first month of ownership, and it astonishes me that supposedly profit-oriented businesses do not realize this fact.
I have concluded that Bill Gates and his minions produce insecure, unreliable, frail, time-wasting garbage. My Windows 2000 system was the high-water mark of Redmond crapware, and it has gathered dust since I got a Mac G5. I'll not buy another Microsoft piece of $#!t as long as I live.
-ccm