Tony Johansen said: >You make me thank the computer Gods for leading me to listen to St Steve >Jobs and invest in the holy (and beautiful) machine Mac. What a relief! For the past 5 years we have been really lucky. Even if there is an OS X-specific virus released today, it will be the first. The next Windows virus released will be one of *over 100,000*!: http://vil.nai.com/vil/default.asp >I, now completely Anti-Virus free, am thinking that if I have an A-V >program, that I will be better off in the event of a newly released virus >due to the (hopefully) rapid release of a security patch by the service I >subscribe to. Is there any real logic in that thinking? That is the thinking of many folks. Others will argue that there haven't been any OS X viruses released during the past 5 years, and that there is no reason to believe that one will be released in the next 5 years. You will probably have to make up your own mind where you think the situation is headed. I run anti-virus software, but I use my computer for my business, so I'm not willing to chance even the smallest possibility of being infected by malware. >Also during my year of Norton A-V it quarantined about a dozen suspicious >files. Which I deleted. Are you suggesting that this apparently successful >work by the program was little more than window dressing? That those files >would have done no harm anyway because they were likely Windows based items? That is quite possible. Or they could have been files infected with Office macro viruses. I am running Virus Barrier, and I've been using it for about 4 years. In all that time it has only ever flagged one thing, and that was a Windows virus. I used Virex under OS 7, 8, and 9, over the span of many years. The only virus that I recall it ever detecting was during the initial run, and even then all that it detected was the inert fragment of a virus. In the DealMac forums is a discussion entitled: "Have you ever caught a Mac Virus?" You might like to read the comments. http://dealmac.com/forums/read.html?f=1&i=952391&t=952391 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