Windows 7

[hollowbody]

Originally Posted by sneakypete

I was speaking figuratively not literally about mac viruses, fully aware there are some but from what I`ve read far fewer for the reasons you state. speaking for myself...all I`m doing is visiting web sites, I believe I got infected at You-Tube, I like watching Bill Maher and Letterman and it`s the best place I know of for that. I`d love to meet up with some of the people who write these viruses.
no virus checker eh...just a matter of time before you too get infected.

Not necessarily. The whole "macs are better because pcs get viruses" thing boils down to a) # of available viruses (which we've covered already) and b) surfing habits.

I've been using computers since the 80's and in my time surfing the internet (or ftps, bbs'es or other pre-internet warez sites), the only time I got hit with a virus was when I was surfing a shady site looking for serial number and cd keys for a specific program (can't recall now). I knew what I was doing could land me in PC-HIV trouble, and it certainly did.

So what happened? Quick re-format, re-install of all my progams and re-copying of my backed up stuff and presto-changeo I was up and running virus-free in less than a day. Big whoop.

If you're surfing cautiously, not clicking on things you shouldn't be clicking on, installing critical updates and generally being careful, viruses shouldn't be a problem. Ever. Regardless of what machine you use.

Macs are great little machines, but they're not orders-of-magnitude better than PCs. They're not better at all, as far as I'm concerned. They're good, but in a different way and maybe at different things. These days, the internal architecture is almost the same as well, so the only real difference is the OS. But if you take your MacBook running OSX and surfing like a moron looking for free porn and serial numbers, then you're going to get hit just as easily as your neighbour on his Dell.

[iaresee]

Originally Posted by hollowbody

Not necessarily. The whole "macs are better because pcs get viruses" thing boils down to a) # of available viruses (which we've covered already) and b) surfing habits.

I'll add a third point to that:

C) The degree of difficulty involved writing an exploit that does something useful for the writer.

Macs run a core OS (BSD) that had historically been built with psychotic attention security and stability. Of all the exploits that have popped up and been patched on my Mac in the last year zero have been OS exploits. They're always software exploits: Java, JavaScript in Firefox, Safari, etc.

Macs are great little machines, but they're not orders-of-magnitude better than PCs. They're not better at all, as far as I'm concerned. They're good, but in a different way and maybe at different things.

I like to say they're just "different" too. Ain't a greener grass, just a different shade of green. I move between 5 or 6 different OSes in the course of a day and each has strengths and weaknesses.

[sneakypete]

guess I`m just a surfing moron then.

[Morbo]

My desktop, my laptop and my girlfriend's laptop are running Windows 7. Awesome OS, my laptop is fairly old and now runs like a new. Installing it was both easy and quick. Craziest thing for me, now I can't live without aero. I use these shortcuts all the time now and feel a bit annoyed when I'm at work on Windows 2000.

[sneakypete]

a few days ago we ditched the desk top and set the lap top up and are now using it full time for the web and I haven`t cursed at it once so far, running very smoothly and it even has Vista. Boots up quickly and is very fast. Life is good again.
the surfing moron...but youse can call me mo.

[NB-SK]

Vista, after the updates, is good...But XP is still way faster at startup.

[Big_Daddy]

Originally Posted by hollowbody

If you're surfing cautiously, not clicking on things you shouldn't be clicking on, installing critical updates and generally being careful, viruses shouldn't be a problem. Ever. Regardless of what machine you use.

I agree, 100%. Every day we have 2 or 3 people coming down to the support area with infected machines. In every case, they have been surfing questionable web-sites (on company time, no less) and clicking around like naive little kids. It costs our company thousands of dollars a month to clean up the mess these people cause on their machines.

On the other hand, I have a PC at home that I use for DAW, PC games, etc. I purposely did not install any AV software to avoid any performance issues. It's been hooked up to the internet for 3 years now and I have not had one virus or piece of spyware/malware/adware on this machine to date. Mind you, I don't let my kids touch this machine.

[Morbo]

Originally Posted by Big_Daddy

I agree, 100%. Every day we have 2 or 3 people coming down to the support area with infected machines. In every case, they have been surfing questionable web-sites (on company time, no less) and clicking around like naive little kids. It costs our company thousands of dollars a month to clean up the mess these people cause on their machines.

On the other hand, I have a PC at home that I use for DAW, PC games, etc. I purposely did not install any AV software to avoid any performance issues. It's been hooked up to the internet for 3 years now and I have not had one virus or piece of spyware/malware/adware on this machine to date. Mind you, I don't let my kids touch this machine.

You know what they say, PEBKAC. It's often the case in my experience.

[NB-SK]

Originally Posted by Big_Daddy

I agree, 100%. Every day we have 2 or 3 people coming down to the support area with infected machines. In every case, they have been surfing questionable web-sites (on company time, no less) and clicking around like naive little kids. It costs our company thousands of dollars a month to clean up the mess these people cause on their machines.

On the other hand, I have a PC at home that I use for DAW, PC games, etc. I purposely did not install any AV software to avoid any performance issues. It's been hooked up to the internet for 3 years now and I have not had one virus or piece of spyware/malware/adware on this machine to date. Mind you, I don't let my kids touch this machine.

Your company would save itself tons of money if its computers were loaded with Ubuntu...But you probably already knew that.

[keto]

Originally Posted by Big_Daddy

On the other hand, I have a PC at home that I use for DAW, PC games, etc. I purposely did not install any AV software to avoid any performance issues. It's been hooked up to the internet for 3 years now and I have not had one virus or piece of spyware/malware/adware on this machine to date. Mind you, I don't let my kids touch this machine.

I've been doing the same for years. We have 3 computers at home, mine in my office, my wife's in living room, and downstairs for the kids. They know, from past history, that if they screw up and get a virus the machine is going to be reformatted and they will lose all their data. Saved games, favourites, whatever up to and including homework, though I will help them salvage important things if possible.

Remarkable really how clean their machines are these days ;)