Consumers are, in general, resistant to passwords. Consider this simple case– Android devices can set a lock pattern or pin in order to unlock the UI and make the phone (or netbook, in the case of the Compaq Airlife 100). The majority of consumers see no point or value to that. You can also, on pretty much any smart phone, screw around with critical settings without putting in a password. Despite some journalism to the contrary, the fairly insecure world of mobile smartphones is not a bonanza of hackers.

And there are alternative security mechanisms that may point to something better. For example, ChromeOS offers a different security model. There’s only one app– the browser. You do everything through it, and every browser tab has an isolated process space. Furthermore, Google’s ultimate goal (at least, last time I checked) in this security model is insanely Pyrrhic. If something compromises the system image, just wipe and reimage the device. Since the user’s life is cloud-based, there’s no reason to not cure the disease by killing the patient.

I should note that, since I wrote this post, Jolicloud has implemented a new launcher and desktop which removes a number of my frustrations, including its asking me for the keyring password AFTER I have already logged in. They’ve also switched to Chromium for that launcher, since it’s the only browser providing a security architecture to make such a thing possible.

Please look at the 4th paragraph from the bottom and continue from there. The process is to boot from a linux live CD or USB stick, get a shell, and use dd to erase everything on the disk. You can add “bs=512M” to the end to make it go faster.

Been challenged by this for ages. This post “showed me the way”.

As someone said “you need several computers to fix one broken one” but the quick and apparently straightforward way is to download the Ubuntu netbook remix or similar onto a USB stick. Boot from that. It includes Partition Editor. Run it from Administration. Delete the primary partition AND reformat as FAT32.

Now boot from your Acer recovery media and ‘Voila!’. I can now flog my laptop with confidence and get something with a built in webcam (major deficiency of an otherwise excellent laptop).

Oh wait..that’s me.
Next time, try using the bs (block size) option for dd.
If I remember right, dd will default to 512 byte block operations..VERY slow, because you have a high protocol to data ratio. Modern media should accept very large “blocks”, and will break it up as needed..so go for a nice meg or so. It makes a huge difference.

Oh..and you might be able to just get rid of the partition table.