From The New York Times:
SAN FRANCISCO, July 15 - Add personal computers to the list of throwaways
in the disposable society.
On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker's Dell desktop computer was
overrun by spyware and adware - stealth software that delivers intrusive
advertising messages and even gathers data from the user's machine - he did
not simply get rid of the offending programs. He threw out the whole computer.
Mr. Tucker, an Internet industry executive who holds a Ph.D. in computer
science, decided that rather than take the time to remove the offending
software, he would spend $400 on a new machine.
He is not alone in his surrender in the face of growing legions of digital
pests, not only adware and spyware but computer viruses and other
Internet-borne infections as well. Many PC owners are simply replacing
embattled machines rather than fixing them.
"I was spending time every week trying to keep the machine free of viruses
and worms," said Mr. Tucker, a vice president of Salesforce.com, a Web
services firm based here. "I was losing the battle. It was cheaper and
faster to go to the store and buy a low-end PC."
In the face of a constant stream of pop-up ads, malfunctioning programs and
performance slowed to a crawl or a crash - the hallmarks of spyware and
adware - throwing out a computer "is a rational response," said Lee Rainie,
director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a Washington-based
research group that studies the Internet's social impact.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/technology/17spy.html?th&emc=th>
Robert Turnbull, Toronto, Canada
