Antivirus Program for Windows XP

I've never understood the difference between a Mac and other computers. Friends tell me they are the machine of choice for the advertising/ graphic design industry. Anyone care to point out the differences/ benefits.

Well yes I think Macs were once mainly in this area, PCs have now dominated that market as well, and apple seem to have spread themselves over quite a large area mainly in the home for a digital hub kinda thing and they are getting quite large in motion graphics and music creation.

For the home user the imac is probably the best bet, screen and computer all in one two inch enclosure www.apple.com/imac

In essence the mac does not run Windows software and runs software based on UNIX. What ever the reasoning there are no known viruses specifically for mac OSX, we are not effected by spybots, spyware, trojan horses, wooden horses, bacteria, spiders, worms, ants, small foxes, malacious teenagers, bored middle aged men or porn site downloads.

The mac will do just about every single thing a PC can do, I am not saying better, because to be fair its ain't necessarily so, for instance if you are a heavy gamer, the mac does not come up to spec.

Companies however like Adobe cut their teeth on mac, and fully support the platform.

OSX (the mac OS) comes with iphoto (for importing photos from any USB equipped camera), itunes, iDVD (For making home DVDs) iMovie (For editing movie from any firewire equipped digicam) mail (email), safari (browsing) and just about every UNIX tool you might want to play with (Although I don't)
In short you get just about everything out the box you need to get started, every major application is avaiable mac including MSOfficeX which even MS admit is about two years ahead of their own PC offering.

In short if you are pissed off with installing, Spybot cleaner, Spybot cleaner x, Spyware Washer Away, Spy Wash away Cleaner, Get read of Dialers, I clean spy bots, Virus Killer, Virus Killer PLus, Check Email for Viruses 1.1, Major Bot cleaner, My Bots hurt Cleanser, Anti Virus 2.2, Kill Virus 3.1, Child Safe 1.8, Worms cleaner, Worm infester cleaner, Destroy Virus, Windows Patch number 6,000,000, Kill your bots, Adware Malware cleaner, Malware cleaner +, Norton Harddrive Cleaner, Norton Virus Cleaner, Norton Disk Doctor, Norton Defragger, Norton Checks little parts + etc etc etc etc


You may want to consider a mac.

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[QUOTE]Originally posted by garyi:
You may want to consider a mac.[/QUOTE
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Well sure, sounds good, but what are we talking price wise for a basic set-up?

Home computer I think is £900, a lap top £700 check out www.apple.com/ukstore

I've just finished watching this latest episode over breakfast and really reccommend it to anybody who can get to see it, especially as it's covering the subject at hand, and is simply excellent, innit.
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickonline.asp?pageid=666

Fritz Von Nice one Our Steve

quote:

Originally posted by Berlin Fritz:
I've just finished watching this latest episode over breakfast and really reccommend it to anybody who can get to see it, especially as it's covering the subject at hand, and is simply excellent, innit.
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickonline.asp?pageid=666

Apart from the podgy essex girl with the flotation bag thighs and extraordinarily bad taste in clothes for a girl with a fuller figure.

I'm still pining for the dark maiden.<sigh>

My mate though really reckons Steve Cole has got a tasty bum !


Fritz Von Well I'll be shocked & stunned

Mind you her own pert rear end pressing into one of her many tight pairs of keks does actually command a second glance as well !


Fritz Von Purely artistic and aesthetic you understand, that's why we're such good chums, innit

I´ve download a Firewall and as a result my computer didn´t work anymore .I´ve got to check with a technician and now it´s ok

quote:

Originally posted by Malky:
Roy, thanks for the tips. BTW, re; my previous posting on this thread. I run a scan on spybot which is identifying 5 threats. When I click the fix button it is indicating 'problem fixed' but the threats are remaining in the box, in red. I then immunize anyway but further scans are revealing the same threats??? Any ideas.

Malky,
I've remembered what my problem was. It showed up as a DSO Exploit and there were some other related ones as well. Five in total I think. This link points to some useful info on that and loads of other common spyware problems. When you see the list it does rather reinforce garyi's point about Macs!

However, while not disputing that Unix/Linux or whatever are fundamentally more secure than Windows is it not the case that two of the primary reasons for lack of viruses (virii?) on Macs is that the user base is small, and they tend not to be used in the financial world? Would it therefore be reasonable to expect that if there were to be a large movement towards Macs then there would be a similar increase in viruses and spyware aimed at Macs?

Agreed Tom, if mac had say 20% of the market then perhaps people would attempt to create more viruses for them.

Consider though that there are still many millions of macs, and lets be honest we are all arrogant smirky little shits.

Why hasn't one been successfully created to take us all out in one hit?

Is it perhaps because the mac isn't so full of holes as Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Explorer, which enables mainly kids with nothing better to do, to download applications which actually help them create viruses?

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Is it perhaps because the mac isn't so full of holes as Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Explorer, which enables mainly kids with nothing better to do, to download applications which actually help them create viruses?

The only one of my machines that has ever been successfully hacked or affected by a virus was actually the one I thought least likely - a Sun Enterprise server running their unix operating system (Solaris).

MacOS has the benefit of not being required to be as open a standard as MS (e.g. Apple have yet to be prosecuted for bundling iTunes!) but any software programmed by humans is liable to contain bugs. Some of those bugs will relate to security issues and I'm sure MacOs will contain some of those as my experience of it has been that it contains bugs everywhere else...

Indeed steve but I think we established in previous threads you don't have much experience of modern maccing.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Indeed steve but I think we established in previous threads you don't have much experience of modern maccing.

That's true if only G5's are included, but I do have a G4. G5's don't do anything I want and seem very expensive in comparison to proper computers, so I can't see myself getting one anytime soon.

Thats probably for the best, sticking with proper computers is the best thing for you to do.

quote:

Why hasn't one been successfully created to take us all out in one hit?

Who'd notice?

quote:

Originally posted by Basil:

quote:

Why hasn't one been successfully created to take us all out in one hit?

Who'd notice?

Now now Basil that's cheeky!

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[QUOTE]Originally posted by TomK:
Malky,
I've remembered what my problem was. It showed up as a DSO Exploit and there were some other related ones as well. Five in total I think. This link points to some useful info on that and loads of other common spyware problems. When you see the list it does rather reinforce garyi's point about Macs!
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Cheers Tom, I'll give this a go later on tonight. I'm mainly using Firefox now anyway. The Mac will have to wait, the CDX2 is top of the shopping list.

As part of my job I'm a member of an academic mailing list (from JISC). One of the hottest topics is computer security and ironically this morning I received an email from them saying that they were noting an increase in "Unix / Linux compromises". Maybe they're coming after you smug buggers after all!

Unfortunately I can't let you see the whole email as they're a bit sniffy about who gets to see the info. I got the impression though that this was being regarded with some concern.

They have 12 days to succeed with OSX before the new build is delivered.

As I say I know we are smug buggers and I wait for the day it happens.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
They have 12 days to succeed with OSX before the new build is delivered.

And 12 days after that until the next one...?

quote:

Originally posted by TomK:
they were noting an increase in "Unix / Linux compromises". Maybe they're coming after you smug buggers after all!

The only succesful hack or virus infiltration we've had so far (in about 6 years of business) was against one of our unix boxes.

The point though steve is the reason you haven't been hacked is because they probably employ You and one other to keep anti virus, trojan horse, worm risk etc under control with a tonne of software.

When I do get hit with a virus, it will be because in 5 years I have not had an antivirus programme, or even the firewall on most of the time.

Do you see the difference yet or do you want to continue mentioning the one unix hit you have had lol?

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
The point though steve is the reason you haven't been hacked is because they probably employ You and one other to keep anti virus, trojan horse, worm risk etc under control with a tonne of software.

You're entirely incorrect in thinking that. We have no dedicated IT staff, all our PC's only have the anti-virus protection they were shipped with plus we have a hardware firewall built into our router.

I do all the IT work (my primary role is that of development director) and all that entails is setting up new machines when they arrive, changing tapes and checking backups every day for our servers, the very occasional bit of unix or Oracle admin and the even more occasional application of hardware upgrades to our servers. Overall I'd be surprised if I average an hour of IT work a week. I know that doesn't fit with your uneducated view of an IT intensive Microsoft world...