You can use sysinternal’s “TCPView” app to see all the program that are connected to the internet at any one time. Make sure all those programs are running with only “normal user” rights and it becomes nearly impossible for viruses, worms or trojans to install themselves.
I’ve set up a few friend and relatives who where constantly infected (even with firewalls, antivirus and anti-spyware active) with this method and as of yet, none of them has “caught” anything new.
I also switch them to Opera 9 if possible, but IE is a lot less dangerous to use with reduce rights.
The Macs and Linux are virus resistant for that very reason: You don’t run as “root” by default.
The only thing I’ll say is I wish to God everyone and their mother would stop making rip-off’s of the “Hi, I’m a Mac / Hi, I’m a PC” commercials. EVERYBODY is doing them. It ceased to be funny after the first one Apple did. Maybe the second.
You can use sysinternal’s “TCPView” app to see all the program that are connected to the internet at any one time. Make sure all those programs are running with only “normal user” rights and it becomes nearly impossible for viruses, worms or trojans to install themselves.
I’ve set up a few friend and relatives who where constantly infected (even with firewalls, antivirus and anti-spyware active) with this method and as of yet, none of them has “caught” anything new.
I also switch them to Opera 9 if possible, but IE is a lot less dangerous to use with reduce rights.
The Macs and Linux are virus resistant for that very reason: You don’t run as “root” by default.
[/quote]
Cool, thnx man. I admit I didn’t quite understand all that. Remember what I said about jargon? Haha. I use FireFox, but since I’m not technically adept I have some probs displaying pics and video info, so sometimes I use IE for those pages. Something to with JAVA? I dunno, whatever. WTF is JAVA? Don’t answer, rhetorical. So I need to know info that I shouldn’t need to know to get the thing to run.
That’s my prob with PC’s, they’re great if ya wanna do mods and add liquid cooling to your overclocked CPU sitting in an anodized neon-lit 10 bay case with dual raid drives, and on and on. See I’m technically inclined, I just don’t care. Guess I should just abbrev that DKDC( Don’t Know Don’t Care.
I also don’t care about programming and screwing around with the BIOS settings, yawn. I don’t know what or where to find, "sysinternal’s “TCPView”, nor do I want to have to do that. “Opera 9”, “reduce rights”, DKDC.
Funny when I bought the machine and took it home I got a virus as soon as I went online and this was with Norton installed. So I take it back to the shop and buddy say, " didn’t you install the patch". I’m like WTF? He says oh yeah ya need this, so I say great maybe ya coulda told me that before asshole. So I’m thinking great I can’t even turn the fucker on without fixing it first. Not too impressive. I’ll try you suggestions if I can translate them into english. Thanks though, I appreciate your help.
Honestly, I really don’t get the whole virus problem with PCs. I’m a software engineer with my degree in computer science so I’ve worked on all sorts of different platforms. Hell, right now at my house I’ve got 3 Macs, 2 windows XP machines, 2 ubuntu boxes, a gentoo box, a free bsd box, and an old spark station running debian (poorly). All of them on the same network and have honestly never had a problem with viruses, even on the windows boxes.
I run both of them with full administrator rights all the time, run no virus protection other than the occasional scan with Lavasoft’s Adaware and Spybot S&D (both great programs to check out btw), and only firewalled at the router (which admittedly is pretty solid, it’s the gentoo box and I wrote the firewall rules).
Anyway, here’s the deal people. Don’t use IE, ever, unless you absolutely have to for some reason. And in most cases, if something requires that you use IE, an e-commerce website for instance, that should tell you something about the company and you may want to consider going somewhere else. Coding web applications to W3C standards (i.e. the ones IE doesn’t conform to) is not that hard and actually makes a lot of sense.
Coding to MS DOM standards on the other hand has always struck me as a bit stupid since it only promotes the propietary functionality of MSIE. Ok, if you’re still reading this you probably already know what I’m talking about so I’ll move on to the next paragraph.
For those of you who didn’t understand that last paragraph or didn’t care to read it. DON’T USE IE!!! Firefox=good, plain and simple.
Next, for the love of god people, read message boxes before you click on them!!! Yes, I know they’re often cryptic and meaningless to you. But a lot of the time the average person can at least glean a general sense of what they’re asking you for. If not, your best bet is to click cancel. Chances are, if it’s something that you actually wanted to do, you can get that message box to come back and hit ok the next time.
However, I can’t tell you how many times I get friends asking me to fix their computers and when I get there and ask them to show me the problem they open IE, get a few error messages, and just click ok to make them go away. A lot of the time these messages are asking if you’d like to install some piece of software. DON’T DO IT!!! Unless you specifically asked for it, or it’s a signed and certified product from a trusted company and website, don’t click ok. This is how adware, spyware, malware, and viruses propagate a lot of the time. Here’s an example:
So you see? Read messages, don’t click ok unless you really think it’s ok, and don’t let the internets[sic] install anything on your computer that you haven’t asked for. If you’re not sure, call a computer savvy friend or find a computer help forum online and post your question.
Last tip is to run some scans every now and then. As I said before, Adaware (by lavasoft) and Spybot Search & Destroy, are both fantastic products. And they’re both free for personal use. They update themselves every time you run them and combined they usually get almost everything that would cause you problems. Google for them, download them, and use them. You’ll be glad you did. Note: I’m in no way associated with either product, this is not a shameless plug. Second Note: Neither of these products is a “anti-virus” program. They are not the same as norton or symantec. They will not get rid of a trojan or other “virus” they just take care of adware, spyware, etc… Viruses are harderd to get and hence harder to get rid of, they take some more powerful firepower.
Ok, I’m going to stop ranting and raving and rambling now. Sorry for the long post. If anyone has any computer related questions or comments, feel free to PM me and I’ll do my best to help. But please keep in mind, I’m busy, so it might take a couple days for a response.
[quote]slappy wrote:
Some people like pc some like mac, personally I like both for different reasons, if I had a choice I would get both. [/quote]
I’ll offer my similar, unhelpful comments.
After using both for 20 years and owning both for 10, I also like PCs and Macs for different reasons and keep both on my desktop in my office. The differences between the two have become fewer over time - so few that it’s tough to even distinguish sometimes. Macs do have ease of use benefits. Like others have said, it comes down to the functions you want to perform.
I own a marketing business in which we do a lot of graphic and web design and video development. With the right programs, we can generally create the same end products on either system. We can also do all the admin. stuff on both, and most everything integrates across platforms.
The main difference between a mac and a pc is how intuitively things work
On my pc whenever i get new software I have to through a process of figuring out how to use it properly.
I even have software setup to keep it running stable and cleaning up junk.
A mac may have less options readily available but the features simply work.
The OS is more stable and clean.
Why have 800 different programs when you can get better programs for free on a Mac?
Oh and the whole windows mobile 2003se…
Nice after spending hours learning how to tweak it…
The compatability issue is a non issue for home users. Basically people use the office package and that’s it.
Office documents has worked fine on both platforms for years now.
And the whole windows media edition scam… Come on, it is for free on mac’s. That’s the way things should be.
Mac is more expensive now though.
I will probably end up buying a kickass powerbook soon. For music production mac is the way to go.
If the biggest problem is not having a 2button muse with a scrool wheel then buy one for your mac. They have been available for years.
For all the masochists that enjoy plug n’ pray vs plug and play and enjoy getting cracks of the internet for programs that should come free on the computer, -stay with pc, mac’s doesn’t hurt as good
I prefer the PC. I like a challenge. The mac is simply too stable, nothing to upgrade, no virus challenges, no spyware assholes to keep out. What’s the fun in that?
With my PC, I’m always working and upgrading and trying to get it up to the capabilities of the mac, plus it’s better for gaming and I have kids who like that part of it.
I’ve also noticed that when I make backup copies of my movies (again, I have kids and DVDs tend to get damaged by children) the PC using the free software is far superior to the mac. I’ve even given away all the DVD backup software I bought when I was a newb…except for one - I’ll keep AnyDVD.
[quote]scan7 wrote:
The main difference between a mac and a pc is how intuitively things work
[/quote]
not at all. How intuitive something is is a completely subjective opinion. People who have used macs for years find windows clumsy and tend to think things are in the wrong place. People who are used to windows get annoyed using macs because things are named differently and look different.
This is a common problem found whenever using a different product than the one you’re used to. Whether it be software or anything else. Take something random for example, say a faucet. Standard faucets (in America at least) have the hot water on the left and the cold water on the right. I’km sure somewhere in the world this is the opposite.
Neither is better or worse, or even more intuitive. Just different. But if you’re used to one and then have to use the other, it will seem clumsy and unintuitive.
Oh my god, you got something new and have to take some time to learn how to use it? No way! What idiot developed that? If I were to write software (which I do) I’d make it so idiot proof that anyone could use it without having ot learn anything about it.
Ok, sarcasm aside, that’s rather ignorant, expecting to get a new piece of software and not being able to use it without any learning curve. Did you get your first car and start driving on the highway without first learning how to control it?
Did you go to the gym for the first time and squat 700lbs with perfect form? Of course not. Same thing with software, there’s always going to be learning involves, mac or windows.
good for you. Last I checked mac OS also has automatic updates, disk defrags, etc… that allow you to keep your system running well.
ummm, no, Mac OS is famous for it’s instablity. OS X is a vast improvement over classic, but still has issues with memory management and file permissions. And much of that improvement comes from the fact that it’s built on a modified Unix kernel.
there is tons of free software available for windows. In fact, seeing as windows holds the vast majority of the desktop market, I’d be willing to wager that there’s more free software available for windows than for mac. Plus, if you’re really into free software, use linux or BSD, not mac OS.
I haven’t used windows mobile 2003se so I won’t comment here.
very true, although there are still occasional inconsistancies when passing documents back and forth. These don’t exist when using OpenOffice.org or an open standard format for text.
while I agree that windows media edition is a scam, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by it being free on macs. It was intended to be a standalone multimedia operating system for use in home theaters. Mac has nothing comparable. True there is movie/music capabilities built into Mac OS, but they are also built into standard Windows installs as well.
mac’s are expensive, but they do make a pretty nice laptop. Although I’d wait a little while longer if you’re looking into getting a macbook pro. They released them way to soon and have had all sorts of problems.
non-issue
[quote]
For all the masochists that enjoy plug n’ pray vs plug and play and enjoy getting cracks of the internet for programs that should come free on the computer, -stay with pc, mac’s doesn’t hurt as good ;)[/quote]
I’m not sure what this last paragraph means. Plug and play doesn’t work consistently on either OS. Finding cracks online for software is just as common among mac users as it is among windows users. and, umm, mac’s doesn’t hurt as good??? I’ll chalk that up to the fact that you don’t appear to be a native English speaker.
