[Novalug] Student Computer

John Holland jbholland@gmail.com
Sun Apr 19 15:45:56 EDT 2009


I had an XP box for my wife, son and daughter and it always had problems.
Malware, system problems - I reinstalled XP on it like three times two
months. Finally it was spontaneously rebooting every 0-5 minutes. Put a
LInux boot CD in and went perfectly for a week. A software problem, not a
hardware one.

 But I ended up buying a Mac to replace it. Same users, same web sites - no
problems. It's been almost two years now. Personally I prefer LInux but Mac
is friendlier for non-geeks.

Understand I am constantly adding and removing software to my work PC (XP)
and work it pretty hard - and I don't have problems on it. I do think the
users are part of the problem. Maybe it's
if (user_unwise && os_is _windows) then trouble. Fix the user _or_ the os
and you're ok.

People keep claiming a Mac or Linux virus or worm is right around the corner
but it never seems to be as much a problem as windows. There were some Mac
worms or something reported in pirate copies of commercial apps.

Maybe  the original poster should put LInux on the machine, with Windows in
a VM and advise his daughter to only use Windows when needed - IE only
sites, Win32 software etc. I would guess 99% of the time could be in Linux
Firefox and OpenOffice.
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