(via The Consumerist)
Wired has an article in which they experiment with taking a newly purchased computer and acting like a typical consumer who has not had any guidance or instruction in dealing with spam, pr0n, and other frequent Intarweb occurances. Note that this was done with the intention of seeing how quickly a system would become hopelessly unusable when used with a complete disregard for the consequences of one’s clicks.
What kind of idiot buys a computer and willingly – even eagerly – exposes it to all the malware and viruses he can? Me. I bought a Dell Dimension B110 ($468! Cheap!) and tried to kill it for more than two weeks. I clicked on every pop-up and downloaded the gnarliest porn, gambling, and hacker files I could find. It seems our Internet overlords are sterilizing spam. If I were to treat my body the way I treated this computer, I’d have yellow fever, bird flu, and Alzheimer’s. But the Dell? Eh. Somewhat the worse for wear.
. . .
Day 18: I take the Dell to Best Buy’s Geek Squad and tell a technician that I’m having a bit of trouble with it. Less than four hours later I get a call back from Carla. She declares it a total loss and advises wiping the hard drive and restoring it with system disks. “The tech ran a couple of virus scans,†she says. “One kept beeping so much that he had to just turn it off.†Ah, that’s the stuff.
[tags]Spam effects, Wired[/tags]