On 17 Apr 2005 at 10:25, dhbailey wrote: > Lawrence David Eden wrote: > > I wrote to the head of the computer sciences center at University of > > Maryland to get his opinion as to what machine to buy. Some of you > > may be interested in his reply: > > > > "Why on earth would you want to subject her to the horrors that > > Windows-using students are subjected to here? I spend almost all my > > time trying to help them recover from Internet attacks, and more and > > more of them are having to reformat their hard drives and reinstall > > the operating system (which leaves them no less susceptible to > > repeat performances unless they take the mass of security steps that > > I almost never have time to go over with them in detail. > > > > Unless she HAS to get a PC (and I can't think of a single reason why > > a freshman would be that committed to one of the departments that > > requires them) she ought to get a Mac. Period." > > > > As a Mac user, (Macher) I don't have to deal with the virus issue. > > How do PC mavens protect themselves from the deluge of attacks on > > their OS? > > Install an antivirus program and that's that.
Yes, but I'll admit that I find the way the commercial AV providers handles subscriptions to be less than ideal. Symantec, for instance, makes no provision for renewing your AV subscription unless you're running as an administrator (this is a design choice on their part that makes no sense whatsoever). But they also provide no clear way to run the renewal process except by occasionally prompting you when you log on. If you properly run your computer on a daily basis as a user-level logon, then you'll see the notification but never be able to actually complete the process. It's more than 5 years since Win2K was introduced and Symantec still hasn't adjusted. I would definitely look at AVG, the free AV software, since you don't have to pay subscriptions, and, so far as I can tell, it's just as effective as Symantec or Mcafee or Trend Micro. > As well as follow some sound computing practices, such as never > opening attachments you haven't solicited, even when they appear to > come from friends or relatives. Well, also things like: 1. never use a Microsoft EMail client (no Outlook, no Outlook Express). Thunderbird, Eudora and Pegasus Mail are all very fine free alternatives. 2. never use Internet Explorer as a web browser. Firefox or Mozilla are far superior web browsers and lack the integration into the OS that makes IE dangerous to use. And they aren't vulnerable to all the spyware that are so easy to accidentally install into IE (only IE supports ActiveX controls, which is how most of these exploits work). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
