[X4U] Good Reading

[Michael Winter]

On Jul 18, 2005, at 3:44 PM, Stroller wrote:

Maybe I am underestimating, but not having done it (installed  
Windows) very often, I have to ask...

> About half of my work is fixing PCs for home users - the other half  
> being fixing them for small businesses. What you're not accounting  
> for is that the average home user simply isn't comfortable  
> reinstalling Windows - many don't even know how to back up their  
> photos to CD!

As much as I don't want to believe that, I do. It's a sad state of  
affairs.

> Installing Windows XP can easily take a couple of hours, especially  
> on systems a year or two old - many PCs are _still_ sold with  
> 256meg or less of RAM - and that's not counting Office, Service  
> Pack 2, internet setup, accounts for the kids &c &c.

But all of that (except probably SP2) would have to be done with a  
new PC too, wouldn't it?

> If I can take the computer home & leave it running - I back-up the  
> whole hard-drive and install any additional software in addition to  
> the above -

And what I couldn't believe is that the first person in the article  
(with a Ph.D. in compsci) didn't have a clean image backed up  
somewhere he could restore instead of buying a whole new computer.  
Which he's going to have to do again in 6 months unless he's going to  
be running a different OS or doing things different than he has been.

> There are so many factors that come into this, it hard to surmise,  
> but for machines of more than 2 years old replacement may not be a  
> bad upgrade.

Like I said, if there are other reasons involved (wanting a faster  
computer), I can understand perfectly. My guess is that many of the  
people interviewed wanted a new PC for whatever reason, and the  
malware was just an excuse they could hang the blame on. But that  
wouldn't make the story quite as interesting. Purely MO.

-Mike