Sometimes, even tech cautionary tales can have a somewhat happy ending. Especially when they don't happen to me directly.
A couple I know who run a small business reached out to me for help recently because their aging laptop was suffering from a virus-induced nervous breakdown. The laptop, a 6-year old Dell running an installation of Windows XP, had never been updated with Microsoft's "service packs" for XP, or new security software, and now it was functional only as a lap warmer and desk paperweight. Their usual source of tech support had diagnosed the problem, but had left them hanging on resolving it.
Running a "rescue" utility might have saved the computer. But it had been so long since they had bought the laptop, they couldn't find the original software installation disks. And just erasing the disk and starting from scratch wasn't an option, since they wanted to rescue the several years of email and other important files off of it.
So they asked if I could help. After running diagnostics on the computer and finding that the files themselves were still there, I went home to prepare my secret weapon: a DVD with a "bootable" copy of Ubuntu Linux on it. I downloaded an image of the operating system from the Ubuntu web site, followed the simple directions, and burned a DVD that could be used to start a computer from.
Ubuntu, a "distribution" of the free and open Linux operating system, is about as user-friendly as Linux gets—user-friendly enough that most people who've used Windows could use it with only a tiny learning curve. And one of the greatest things about Ubuntu, and its latest version in particular, is that you can run the operating system and much of the software that comes with it on your computer without having to install it, straight from a DVD—while still being able to get to the files on your hard drive, and connect to your home network.
Also, there's the fact that it's free. And since it runs from the DVD, and isn't Windows, I wasn't concerned about viruses being able to do more damage to the computer.
I did a dry run with Ubuntu from DVD on my old Toshiba laptop, which currently runs an installation of Windows 7. I was able to access my wireless network, a USB "thumbdrive", and all my files on the laptop's hard drive. And even from DVD, the operating system performed well. I even "booted up" the Ubuntu DVD on my Apple iMac, and got the same results—the only things that didn't work were the iMac's built-in microphone and iSight camera.
The other upside of Ubuntu is that since it runs well on older computers, I'll be able to install it on my friends' old computer for them once they've recovered everything they need from it. And then they'll have a second computer that they can safely surf the web from, listen to music with, and do just about everything else they did with it before—without worrying as much about viruses and malware. And they won't even have to pay for the upgrade.