We’ve been a Microsoft-free household for the better part of a decade.\u00a0 I had one lonely copy of Windows XP on a virtual machine so that I could occasionally use iTunes to manage my iPad.\u00a0 Everything else runs some variant of Linux, OSX, or iOS.\u00a0 Until yesterday, Christmas day.<\/p>\n
We purchased new hardware so the girls can a) run their Windows-based games, and b) stop fighting over the other “fast” computer.\u00a0 It wasn’t a terribly expensive machine (<$200) but it offers decent performance.\u00a0 We went completely over to the Dark Side and purchased it from our local Microsoft Store.<\/p>\n
I was pleased with the whole process — I rather prefer the tenor of the Microsoft Store over the Apple Store (located a few storefronts away in the same mall).\u00a0 Windows 10 is supposed to be so much better, too.\u00a0 I’m not a fan of the interface but it is intuitive for some tasks.<\/p>\n
I have just, as I type this, finished removing malware.\u00a0 Already.\u00a0 Less than 24\u00a0 hours after turning their new, fully-patched Windows laptop over to the kids, there is malware on it.\u00a0 The built-in Windows Defender virus and malware scanner didn’t detect it, of course, but it was clear that something was wrong when I borrowed it back to check on it.<\/p>\n
Color me unsurprised.\u00a0 I’m just glad that I took a whole-disk image before<\/strong> first boot.\u00a0 I think I will be restoring it to factory settings before too long.\u00a0 (the bastards don’t include recovery media anymore.)\u00a0 I’m also glad that tools like MalwareBytes<\/a> and Spybot Search and Destroy<\/a> have free versions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We’ve been a Microsoft-free household for the better part of a decade.\u00a0 I had one lonely copy of Windows XP on a virtual machine so that I could occasionally use iTunes to manage my iPad.\u00a0 Everything else runs some variant of Linux, OSX, or iOS.\u00a0 Until yesterday, Christmas day. We purchased new hardware so the … Continue reading “Windows? Oh, right, that means malware”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[63,242,79,241,240],"class_list":["post-1134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-christmas","tag-from-the-kids-install-the-darndest-things-department","tag-kids","tag-malware","tag-windows-98-4ever"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4o3FW-ii","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}