Well, the 250 GB external hard drive has arrived, and the Mac Mini should be here on Halloween. Last weekend I made a Herculean effort to get RHG’s computer (Gateway P4 2.0 – GHz) to a) work and b) access the Internet. I had partial success with a., but the Internet access was more challenging. I finally resorted to downloading IE7 to a thumb drive and installing it. No luck. The best course of action at that point was to reinstall Windows XP Pro, the unintended result being that I reformatted the hard drive, lost everything not Windows-connected, and was still Internet challenged.
Plan B. was to replace the whole box with Real Wife’s old machine (Gateway Celeron – a real piece of crap) which since new has been afflicted with the silicon version of Alzheimer’s disease. It could, however slowly, access the Internet, but her games simply would not run. I virus-checked it with no results. After being driven crazy with RHG’s boredom, I told her to use Real Wife’s computer when otherwise not in use. Understand that RW’s computer has Norton Internet Security, is update automatically every night, and is virus scanned weekly. To make a long story short, I spent the better part of last night rebuilding the Windows registry. Something caused a Norton error that read “TCP/IP Not Installed”, meaning that incoming email was not being scanned. This came after RHG reported that Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events kept locking up with some sort of email screen. I suspect this was somehow related to her Hotmail account, although Instant Messaging may also be a culprit. I got everything back up to speed (including getting rid of programs that were mysteriously self-installed such as Weatherbug and MyWebSearch), and promised Real Wife that RHG would be forever banned from that computer.
Plan C was to tell RHG that she was getting her birthday present early. I realized today that I do not have a USB keyboard, so I had Real Wife pick one up during her weekly 20 mile track to Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, it has bells and whistles that require that it be used in a Windows machine. I will therefore try to borrow a keyboard from work until next week or, failing that, buy one from our local Dell “Superstore” (yes, in a town of 2,500 people we have a Dell Superstore). I don’t particularly care for the proprietor (or Dell for that matter), but it will work out because I can tell him that I only need the keyboard – I bought the computer elsewhere.
Which brings me to the point of this post. It should be apparent that there is a common thread to this and related posts by yours truly. RHG is a pox upon every computer she uses. I love her dearly, but there you have it. I’ve looked at the history of her usage, and all I see are typical web sites that an early teen would be drawn to like a moth to a flame. I suspect that malware practitioners using human engineering have targeted her demographic. Hence the Mac choice. In addition to a different OS, I am now pondering what other safeguards are appropriate. I know that Norton offers security software for Macs, but is it necessary? I realize that the threat will increase as Macs become more popular, but I would rather not pay for another subscription until I have to. Nothing on her machine is mission critical, so I suppose I can afford to be a beta test for the first widespread Mac virus outbreak (RHG may disagree, but it’s my AMEX card). The real question is whether that threat is a) already present, or b) imminent. I’ll spend the money if it is well spent, but it is just one more thing to keep track of. I am taking other precautions as well, such as migrating RHG from Hotmail to Gmail and looking for alternatives to IM (I am guessing that a mass migration amongst RHG’s circle will please many other parents, and perhaps significantly reduce the revenues of our local computer superstore (many of which are derived from near terminal malware infections).
On a related topic, I’ve spent the remainder of the weekend doing work-related patent due diligence. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve downloaded IE7 and installed it on all of the machines in my domain. I know, I know, IE is considered to inferior to Firefox et al., and many of you will probably tell me that its use is probably the root of my problems. Nonetheless, I like IE7. Patent due diligence requires simultaneous access to several on-line databases, as well as a word processor and spreadsheet, and everything worked smoothly. I particularly like the tab system, where you can have multiple web pages open without clogging up the bar at the bottom that shows what programs are running.
Tomorrow after work I have to patch the tube on RHG’s bike. Finally, a project that is a more traditional “Dad Project”.