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An older lady, friend of my mom's from church, has had XP Pro since it became available. Absolutely NO updates, but I never worried about her too much because the computer wasn't online. It was a typewriter that could print, to her. She called a national well-known ISP and arranged for service. They came out and installed cable for her. So far, so good. Now, if she had had any experience with computers, or if I would have been there, that would have been enough- get the computer online and let MS update until next week. They told her she had to pick between three packages to get online- one was Yahoo, the other AOL and there was one more, but she can't remember what it was. She picked Yahoo because it was the only one she had ever heard of before. The technician then inserted a CD into her clean computer and installed two tons of junk. He called it a "set-up" cd. He set her up, all right. She now has Yahoo everything- IE is a mess with the Yahoo toolbar and instant messaging that she isn't going to use and tries to log her on every time she boots the computer. She's afraid to let me uninstall all the crapware that CD put on her (formerly) clean computer because she is afraid she won't be able to get her email or browse the Internet. I disabled as much as I could, and I did kill 8 garbage programs that loaded at boot, like Yahoo Messenger. I'm ticked that they took advantage of her like that. She had a clean system, and she could have just gone online, but they made it sound as if one of their "partner programs" was necessary, and they suckered her into YaHell. The tech never turned on her automatic Windows updates, Windows firewall or advised her that she needed anti-virus software, but he made sure she had a Yahoo browser. Oh boy! A week afterwards, she called me because her computer would not recognize her new external hard drive. Well, of course not- no SP1, and the ext drive is 200 gigs. In a week, she'd managed to collect several problems, all which could have been prevented with turning on auto updates and installing Internet Security. I spent 6 hours cleaning it up, then went back the next day to finish. This was a CLEAN computer, now it probably should just get wiped. Shame on them for doing this to her! She wanted to be able to use Google like she's seen me do on my laptop, and she thought email might be fun. She isn't Internet sophisticated to distinguish spam from legit mail all the time, and she opened attachments and clicked here and there- a security program would have alerted her that one of those attachments had a virus. In less than a week, her computer had turned into a bot, slowed down to a crawl and she thinks she has to use Yahoo to do all her searching. I've got her computer running better, and she's not infected with anything now, but I would like to make that tech eat that CD and all of its "features". Okay, I feel better for venting.
Johanna
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you said Yahell, I've also met AOLHell and previously I've heard of BT Hell, fortunately for myself friends & family in the most case they've avoided the *.hells
But in every case when I've been present during an internet install the tech has insisted we must do this or the internet won't work. It was only after my insistence "do it my way or go away", suprise suprise, it worked. I wonder why
In all fairness to the isp (don't get me wrong, I scorn such methods) but realaize that there are usually 2 tech groups that isps use: one group does the Internet setup/installation and the other does troubleshooting/repairs.
I learned that the hard way over the years, specifically when the isp would send the wrong type of technician to handle the unknown issue w/ Internet connectivity.
Also, it's not the installers job to configure the comp for the end user and the installer has no business adjusting Windows settings and Services such as Auto Updates and Firewall. Nor should the installer install or fool with antivirus or antimalware programs. Most isps have their own free security suites and at best, the installer should "recommend" using something for security, but it's not his job to educate the end user.
That's why I instruct my friends and clients to always call me when the isp installer arrives so I can instruct the installer what NOT to do.
