[X-Newbies] Utulities and such in OS X.

[Randy B.Singer]

Brian Durant said:

>I am curious as to which utilities, etc. people are using in OS X.
>Norton SystemWorks, Drive 10,  TechTools Pro, Norton AntiVirus, Virex,
>Virus Barrier, und alles. Coming from OS 9, I don't really know if any
>of these are necessary anymore or not, particularly on a brand
>spanking new G5. What is hype and what is fact?

Basically you are asking about two different things: maintenance/disk 
utilites and anti-viral utilities.

As far as maintenance/disk utilites, I've made a bunch of recommendations 
on my Web site at:

OS X Routine Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Of the commercial utilities, I think that Disk Warrior is by far the 
best, but you can probably do without it completely if you are using OS 
X.  I have it, but unlike when I used OS 8/9, I've never felt that I 
couldn't do without it.

As far as anti-viral programs go, there is some debate whether you need 
one at all under OS X.  For now at least, there are *no* viruses (as in 
"zero") that infect OS X.  (At least not any verifiable ones in the 
wild.) Check out:
Mac Viruses By The Numbers
http://www.macobserver.com/editorial/2003/08/29.1.shtml

Office macro viruses can run on the Mac, even under OS X, but they can 
easily be contained by enabling "Macro Virus Protection" in Preferences 
in each Office application.  That will effectively keep them from 
running.  (Even if they do run, many Office macro viruses expect to find 
Windows software to do damage to, not Mac software.)

However, there are a handful of (mostly non-malicious) viruses that can 
infect OS 9/Classic, even though they are now very rare. 

So anti-viral software is still minimally useful to have, even if you are 
running OS X, if you have OS 9/Classic installed. 

Of the anti-viral programs that are available, my personal opinion is 
that Intego's Virus Barrier is by far the best.  It runs entirely 
invisibly and it extracts no performance penalty.
http://www.intego.com/virusbarrier/ 



Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html