[X4U] Re: Good Reading

[Stroller]

On Jul 18, 2005, at 7:26 am, Randy B.Singer wrote:
>
> I spoke with some folks who had been in the audience, over drinks 
> later,
> and they said that it wasn't a compelling argument for them, that they
> just run anti-viral software and that they don't have a problem with
> malware.
>
> So, I don't know. Is malware only a problem for Windows users who are
> idiots and who don't install anti-viral software?

No. It's a problem for most Windows users at some point or another - 
the folks you've met were probably pretty technical to have avoided it 
completely.

Windows boxes connected to the net using a USB ADSL modem seem to be 
worse affected than ones behind a router in my experience, and families 
with kids are affected more than adults who only use the net sensibly, 
but stuff still creeps through to the remaining 25% of users. Corporate 
networks are secure from the vast majority of viruses, but on the rare 
occasion they do get infected it tends to catch every machine in the 
company, taking days to clear up.

In looking for other problems I've found viruses lurking which caused 
no inconvenience to the user, and I've often seen other machines 
running the latest McAfee or Norton which has failed to protect them 
from nasty infections. Norton and McAfee are both overpriced pap, by 
the way - I recommend Grisoft's AVG, which is also free for personal 
use, but there's no such thing as immunity because even daily updates 
can't keep up with the bad guys.

> If that is the case, then I would expect the same folks to be too 
> stupid
> to be willing to switch to a different platform.

This is a gross over-simplification, but yes. People use Windows 
because it's what they use at work, it's what they can buy in the high 
street (or mall, over there, I guess), it's what they know.

Whilst I've gone on record here before as saying there's a program to 
perform most jobs that most users want to do, we all know that 
Specialist Niche.app for Mac doesn't do half the job of Niche For 
Specialists 2006, and I'd hate having to explain to some of my 
customers that they can't use this particular program anymore, they 
have to use that one, and I _know_ it looks different - that button 
there has been replaced by that menu item over here and so on.

Stroller.