Michele and I looked at netbook computers that she could take with her on the road for a couple of months until the need for one became desperate and she bought one - the HP Mini at Best Buy for $279. Out of the box we both thought it was fast enough, sturdy enough and easy to set up.
Right away, an IT specialist at her company helped her install the client software for their Citrix server. Then I removed the "crapware" that HP pre-installed such as Norton Antivirus, AIM and AOL, and installed OpenOffice 3.1, Mozila Firefox and Zonelabs Zone Alarm Internet Suite.
Sometime around the third day of owning this, it became infected with a really crazy virus/Trojan called Total Security, which maquerades as several separate programs under Windows XP. The symptoms are that you'll see a window from "Total Security" pop up automatically warning that your system is infected and you'd better take action. To take action you're supposed to register your copy of this software and enter your credit card. Thank goodness there were some signs that it was a fraud, because 80% of this looks totally legitimate and must trick a lot of people.
When I tried to run the Zonelabs Zone Alarm tools, it had not been disabled, but it was NOT able to remove the infection at all.
Add/Remove Software in the Control Panel had been disabled, so I couldn't remove anything obvious. It seemed that it had disabled "safe mode" startup (holding F8 during a restart), which failed to work despite several tries. Eventually however restarting after 30 seconds completely off, while tapping the F8 key rapidly, brought results that worked.
Michele rode shotgun and found several web sites documenting "Total Security" and how to remove it. The most helpful posts were recent ones because this infection has evolved over the course of a year to become more resistent to removal. A web site called Bleeping Computer had a method that worked to remove "Total Security" and to start in "safe mode." a backup method that we didn't have to try.
After hours of working on this fix, her netbook is finally rid of this virus, but I expect if it came once - right past Zone Alarm - to infect the PC once, it will probably come again and I will need to purchase and register the removal tool offered by Malwarebytes. I am wary after this whole affair about whether Malwarebytes itself has some interest in spreading the Total Security pox, since it has the known medicine against it. If others have had an experience I would appreciate knowing about it, Thanks!. Meanwhile thanks to Malwarebytes for the solution that got our HP back in shape.