3 hours wasted on a new netbook!

The day before yesterday, my little sister got a netbook! An MSI wind U135 which costs around KD 80! The problem is, she doesn’t know a lot about computers and the only thing she knows how to use is windows which she had learned from school! Though, she knows what ubuntu is, as a matter in fact, she used lubuntu whenever she wanted to use a PC during the summer vacation! But she said that she wanted to stick with Windows XP since she believes everything else is a bit more complicated!

Well, you know, a kid knowing nothing about portable PCs can get the PC damaged in no time! So I gave her a lecture of how things works and what she should and shouldn’t be doing! Like moving it while it’s on might cause losing data due to bad sectors on the HDD! … The thing I got stuck at was when I tried to tell the difference between Sleep and Hibernate, it took a while to pass the info!

Explaining, from how to charge to starting it up to using it to shutting it down took me around an hour! That was nothing compared what I had to do after that! She’s using Windows, I had to make it as secure as possible!

I had 3 things in mind that I knew if I accomplished, it would be 90% safer, if not more! Install an Antivirus, set a safer browsing environment, and … disable viruses auto run ability!

As for the antivirus, I’ve always know that it’s either AVG or Avast, but I wanned to be certain, I haven’t been using windows as my main OS for years, so I asked the ones who are more experienced than me in that field, #windows on freenode!! The good thing is … I got suggestive replies, but the replies were unexpected! Most were “Use Microsoft Security Essentials“! Since so, I downloaded it!

For the safe browsing bit, I’ve seen an app before that I knew it would get in handy in this situation! Something called Sandboxie! It’s simply awesome for new bees! I even wrote a blogpost about it yesterday!

The thing that remained was that autorun files of viruses would be a problem even if an antivirus was installed, so I had to disable the autorun functionality! Of course to do that, it requires a registry “hack”, I followed this guide and it was … okay!

Of course, knowing those was the easy part, installing some of them was the hard part! I wasted more than an hour trying to install M$’s antivirus, though it worked later on when my brainz size started to overflow out of disgust! All of that took me around 2 hours and a half, the last half was me downloading and installing Firefox inside of Sandboxie and downloading VLC! Also, teaching my sister how to browse, to use Firefox that runs under sandboxie, and that she should never get close to IE!! XD

3 hours, what a waste of time! The thing is, in linux, we do not need to install an antivirus, disable autorun, nor even have a sandbox application! My sister actually asked me to install Ubuntu on her netbook before I finish, and I said … not now! Two reasons, one: using ubuntu wouldn’t help her in any way since they’re teaching her on Windows in school! Two: I believe she’s in need of knowing how to use windows and the basic stuff first! I am not saying I wont install it, I am, unless she changes her mind!

~ by AnxiousNut on September 20, 2010.