I hadn’t really thought about the long-term ramifications of teaching a Malware course, but it appears that I will be teaching it annually for the foreseeable future. Since I don’t think it’s the wisest idea to mess with live malware on my day-to-day system, I bought a “new” laptop last week. It’s actually a used laptop from eBay, an Asus Zenbook Prime. While similar laptops are occasionally available from woot.com as refurbs, careful auction hunting netted it for less.
Here’s the exact specs:
Asus Zenbook UX31A-DH51
- 13.3″ 1920×1080 IPS LCD screen
- Intel Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz
- 4 GB DDR3 RAM
- 128 GB Solid-State Disk
- Intel HD Graphics 4000
Since I wanted a computer that could be setup as an example for the students, I didn’t buy another Apple Macintosh. The Asus is pretty comparable to a mid-level Macbook Air, and this used one cost me about 33% as much. The new laptop has a ding or two, and didn’t come with all the accessories, but it works and fits my needs. The speed at which Windows-compatibles lose their market-value is surprising to a long-time Mac owner (and a topic for another post).
I immediately blew away Windows 8, and replaced it with Elementary OS (Luna). All things considered, installation went pretty smoothly.