IE users: take note of this!

[Skybird]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5384170.stm

[Immacolata]

Sheesh, another patch for the swiss cheese that is Internet Exploiter. In exactly 14 days my new macbook will arrive. And I will bid this flawed OS and its flawed browser good riddance. Keeping my Silent Hunter rig standing by, but all vital communication heresoforth will happen within the OS X environment...

[bradclark1]

How often have you been bitten/took-over/wormed with XP?

[Immacolata]

Let me see, I have suffered at least a dozen virus attacks during my Windows years, and I have been subject to half as many browser hijacks due to clueless family members (my self included) getting "Free smileys" and that sort of crap. The last infection I had was especially nasty and took me most of a sunday to clean up.

I have felt it partner. And I am not happy about it.

But on Mac OS X there are rarely hijacks. And nothing installs itself without asking for the admin password. Which means not very many trojans stand a chance of ever installing.

[bradclark1]

If that was in 98 yes you're right. In XP I'd be a little suprised. I'm not a microsoft evangelist, just curious.

[STEED]

I've had XP for a good two years and still getting patches to plug the gaps, today I got a email telling me how great Vista is well no thanks and deleted that one.

Back in the 1960's they said we will have wall to wall technology doing all the work for us and we will have so much free time and so on, technology don't you just love it.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by bradclark1

If that was in 98 yes you're right. In XP I'd be a little suprised. I'm not a microsoft evangelist, just curious.

Since Windows 98, through Windows 2000 (which I must admit was rather uneventful). Macroviruses in office docs. VBScript viruses like Iloveyou. A single or two ActiveX sploits. The brunt of the viruses was under Win 98, the trojans and spyware under Windows XP. It doesn't take much the first time to fool a user. Then you learn and don't repeat. But that is first after having had to clean out your system from malware. having done that too many times I can't wait to wave goodbye to the mediocre user experience that windows has turned out to be.

Not BAD. Just not especially transparent, alas.

[Skybird]

Best security barrier is inside people's brains. If somebody is lowering all kinds of standards just to see a thousand blinking lights and moving pictures on webpages, then he should not complain when occasionally picking up some kind of malware. I use IE with maximum settings and have deactivated some services manually. It is extremely rare that my scanners (AV, Spybot, AdAware, A2) find something. not more than once or twice a year.

Don't click on every button and don't allow all kind of crap taking place on your screen - and you can live quite comfortably and safe even with IE (whereas Firefox, when I tried it longer time ago just gave me up to one dozen findings when scanning the HD - every week).

[Theta Sigma]

IE7 is no improvement either. There still isn't even a public release, just candidates.

[MothBalls]

Originally Posted by STEED

Back in the 1960's they said we will have wall to wall technology doing all the work for us and we will have so much free time and so on, technology don't you just love it.

Back in the late 80's and early 90's thy said within a decade we'd be a paperless society, that computers would create and display everything we needed.

All computers have done is make printers more efficient at curning out thousands of pages of waste nobody every reads.

[jumpy]

Though I have a tendency to slate anything made by micro$oft, XP PRO has (thus far) been fairly immune to threats and the like. I'm not sure if this is to do with my common sense attitude to files and attachements/adverts etc or my plethora of firewall and antivirus, spyware and adware killers, 3rd party web browsers - Firefox. The last time I got a confirmes 'virus' .... can't remember. Last time I had confirmed spyware ...last week ZA flagged Gamespy as adware as it collects user data - in this case online rankings for a particular game I own (I have confirmed this). Same goes for installing apps etc, keep an eye on what they want to send out accross the net...
If the GF has to use my pc I let her use the guest account which has almost no privilages whatsoever. I don't think she can even download files with it hehe. But she has her own PC connected to the net with mine as a gateway, so if I'm protected with my firewall, so is she.
All of this can be a real drag when it comes to maintenance stuff, but given that I can't say I've ever had my system killed by something nasty I suppose it must be worth it.
On the other hand it would be nice to have a system where you could rely on the software to secure you from threats automatically, rather than having to employ expensive bouncers to keep an eye on your OS's 'revolving door policy'.

[Nightmare]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Don't click on every button and don't allow all kind of crap taking place on your screen - and you can live quite comfortably and safe even with IE (whereas Firefox, when I tried it longer time ago just gave me up to one dozen findings when scanning the HD - every week).

Complete opposite experience for me. I’ve been running Firefox exclusively for the past 5 months and the 3 scanners I run have not picked up any spyware/malware/adware since. However my wife uses IE and I have to clean garbage off her PC every week.

A little lesser known fact is that Microsoft is typically 2 month behind the curve on their security patches. However the guy I know at Microsoft says they are trying to fix that.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by jumpy

Though I have a tendency to slate anything made by micro$oft, XP PRO has (thus far) been fairly immune to threats and the like. I'm not sure if this is to do with my common sense attitude to files and attachements/adverts etc or my plethora of firewall and antivirus, spyware and adware killers, 3rd party web browsers - Firefox. The last time I got a confirmes 'virus' .... can't remember.

ROFL. That is about the same as saying "I don't see why these gun bullets are so dangerous. I mean Im not sure if it has anything to do with my reinforced subterraneous concrete bunker..."

Apart from being an overall more pleasant operating system, Mac OS X is for the day fairly hassle free. That might change, but I change now because I want to try something new after 14 years of Windows. And I'm hearing good things about MacOS X.

[jumpy]

^^
lmao

reinforced subterraneous concrete bunker...

I like the sound of that

[JSLTIGER]

Somebody once gave me the most effective descriptive comparison between Windows and OS X that I've ever heard.

Mac OS X is like a mitten, in that it is easy to put on and can be very comfortable, but lacks functionality (in that it binds one's fingers together). Windows, on the other hand, is like a glove, a little bit harder to get on, and not necessarily as comfortable, but offering greater flexibility and control.

Modern operating systems are incredibly complex in the tasks that they're asked to perform, and in reality are very stable (yes, even Windows). The only reason OS X is "rock solid" is because Apple stringently controls the hardware that it allows in its systems. I'd wager to say that if OS X had to be put onto the amount of various system configurations as Windows, it'd be hard pressed to be as stable as Windows is.