...of laptops and viruses...

I consider myself to be a fairly "with it" dude. I own a laptop computer, I now carry a "smart phone", I own a Bluray disc player. In other words, I am not afraid of technology. (I just wish I could fix and figure out my own issues every time, but alas, just like "Oil Can Henry's" for my vehicles, that's what tech support is for!)

Here's the story..... In November of 2007, my wife was going to school on line and needed a lap top. We bought her an off of the shelf (display) unit basic entry level Compaq. We knew it wasn't the most up to date, but were told (sold) that it would do everything that we needed it to for an "online student". The laptop worked great.... for about a year and a half. I soon had a need as my business changed hands to own my own lap top - and in March of 2008, I purchased an "Acer" laptop off of an ad from OfficeMax. I spent about $650 I think. In September of of 2008, my wife's Compaq had basically given up the ghost, and she announced it was time to buy a new one. This time we were more patient and also willing to spend more to get her the computer that would not only last her to completion from school, but would also carry her into her carreer field. We bought an HP and an extended warranty from Curcuit City (Insert jeers, raspberries, and sucking wind sounds here)and we were off to the races again.

The short part of the story is... My Acer laptop has been a phenominal machine. I defrag about once every two weeks and run my anti virus software atleast once a month. I send and receive a lot of emails, I did watch a lot of TV episodes on it when I was living in my trailer in Utah. I pretty much have stayed on the "beaten" path of Yahoo, msn, and major providers - but - have piggy backed signal from neighbors in the trailer park, wifi hot spots and such. My computor still works great today.

Marcy's compaq died in 1 1/2 years - the people who looked at it all said - "man, a bunch of viruses" "cheaper to buy new then to fix this one..."

After spending closer to $1000 on Marcy's HP, I was pretty frustrated when all of a sudden, it stopped working as well... After only 2 years. We had a tech guy work on it as well and he basically was able to back up all of her data (photos mainly), and we got the same "boy this is pretty toast" jargin from him as well.

I am relatively confidant that no one in my household is pulling up pornographic websites, looking at pirated videos, blackmarket sales sites, and such. Where are these viruses coming from? When I do catch the kids on Marcy's computer, they are usually at "webkins", somethingsomething @ edu.com, free games, etc. And Marcy's computers just keep falling victim of these "viruses"!

Financially, this is starting to really suck!

The main difference between my computer and Marcy's? I have a password and don't give it to the kids. And yes, I am considered a jerk for it. Marcy will set a new password, but eventually, the kids get it out of her, and they go back to it. This has got to stop!

Is it possible that websites geared towards children with addresses sounding safe are the biggest culprit? I guess I am naive. But I am done with replacing computers just because a website allowed a virus to come in and wipe it out.

What can be done? What should be done? Hmmmmm Grrrrrrr