[MV] Voice Recognition Issues

[Joseph Senecal]

On Feb 21, 2007, at 11:25 AM, Randy B. Singer wrote:

>> Plus I heard that running Windows on my Mac would make
>> me vulnerable to all the virulent computer viruses out there.   
>> Since there
>> are so many experienced people on this list, I would like to find  
>> out if
>> either of these things are really true.
>
> It's true that running Windows on your Mac opens you up to being  
> infected by just about all of the malware that exists for Windows,  
> but it is fairly easy to avoid this problem.  There are two main  
> vectors for infection under Windows: the Internet and sharing  
> software with others.  So, if you refrain from using Windows to  
> access the Internet (and this should be easy as OS X can do  
> whatever you want to on the Internet) and if you don't share  
> software, you should be fine.
>
> There are some very nice, free, effective, anti-virus programs for  
> Windows that you can install also.  Let me know if you need a  
> recommendation.
>
> Note that there are no known cases (at least that I know of ) of a  
> Windows infection on your Windows partition damaging your data on  
> your Mac partition.  So if worse comes to worse, you can wipe your  
> Windows partition and start over.  This shouldn't be a big deal if  
> you are only using Windows for a couple of mission critical  
> applications.

Some additional notes for added safety.

If you don't need internet access on Windows, disable it completely  
either in Parallels or in Windows itself. If your windows isn't  
listening to the internet, it's safe even from direct attacks.

For even more safety, set it up so that the Mac can see your windows  
data but Windows can't see your Mac data. That way even if some  
malware attempts to wipe your Windows drive, your Mac data will be  
safe. A shared folder is fine (that's how I move files between them  
on my systems), but anything in the shared folder can be erased by  
Windows.

Joe Senecal