Thread drifting for a moment, do folks have any recommendations for where to buy reasonably priced, legal Win 7 licenses ? I really should upgrade my compatability platform...
Thanks -- Sent from some kind of mobile device... -------- Original message -------- From David Cantrell <da...@cantrell.org.uk> Date: 27/03/2014 23:59 (GMT+00:00) To london.pm@london.pm.org Subject Re: XP-Replacement for Parents On 27/03/2014 17:34, Smylers wrote: > David Cantrell writes: >> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 03:21:02PM +0000, Smylers wrote: >>> Note my concerns weren't about the OS's user interface, but scanner >>> support and a couple of decades' worth of WordPerfect documents. >> Assuming that Ubuntu supports the scanner, WordPerfect could run >> inside a WinXP VM. > Does that avoid the security problems with running XP directly? Sort of. If the XP VM is isolated from the interweb - so never runs a browser, never runs a mail client - that'll cut out the vast majority of the risk. Of course, the user can still sneak things into it manually (infected files for example) or if you've got USB pass-through enabled (useful for the scanner!) there's a risk of auto-running nonsense on Flash drives. I think the auto-run idiocy can be turned off though. I'd still install some antivirus thingy just to be on the safe side - paranoid, but can't do any harm. I believe AVG is the freebie of choice. Counter-intuitively, once support stops, you should actively turn off any OS updates, just in case some naughty person manages to do something like hijack the DNS and serve malware to the millions of XP machines that will still be out there. > Also, would the XP that came with the laptop work in a VM? No idea. -- David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world THIS IS THE LANGUAGE POLICE PUT DOWN YOUR THESAURUS STEP AWAY FROM THE CLICHE