It takes about 2 hours to fix the usual infestations, but about 1 out of 10 times something goes wrong and it takes 10 hours.  At $75 fixed cost, you are doomed.  And no one ever has all their CDs, license, keys, etc that would be needed for a full scrub and reinstall.

So, I don't advocate this approach, but it is not totally unrealistic either.

Still, I don't know how people get into so much trouble with their Windows PC's. Is it the P2P programs, or the IE-Outlook duo? I have been using my Windows XP laptop heavily for the last couple of months, and I haven't had a single malaware problem. The wireless router has a firewall, and I use Thunderbird for email, Firefox for most surfing and IE for a few sites. Above XP Sp2, I haven't installed a single patch - Windows is unfixable anyway! I don't do P2P, and I switch off the machine when I am done (to conserve electricity). AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy are my only weapons against malaware. I used to have AVG virus scanner, but I got rid of it when it started getting in the way too much. I occassionally run the Trend Micro online virus scan.

I'd say RH FC4 config'd for DHCP, 1024x768 with xmms-mp3 of course.  Firefox with pop-up blocks and the dl'able flashblock installed.  Don't know how good is totem?  does FC4 come with a working mplayer for dvd's?  Or would I have to dig up a decent dl for that as well.

I'd probably create a standard user id and password to give out.   I probably wouldn't give the root password out at all on the grounds that if you don't know/can't figure out how to get around that problem, you shouldn't have it anyway.   This is a USER box.  You log in as root and the user warranty is void.