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Ahh, I always like doing *anything* with impunity!!

Surf on, Mac friends!

The ISP I work for charges $60 for a full spyware scan & Removal/Virual Scan & removal/Security updates & patches. That's an hour and a half of bench time. And we have a backlog of computers usually lasting for days. It's insane! I love subtling pointing out to people who bring in their computers (and ask me how to never have to deal with this stuff again) that my Macs don't have spyware or virus/malware issues. It just simply doesn't happen on Macs. In the meantime, people still bring in their computers for this problem, some have brought in their systems 3 to 4 times in a 3 month period. It just boggles the mind.

My stock reply now to Windows using friends asking for help:
"You have a virus, or a malware programme, or a worm, or a trojan, or a this, or a that, all because Microsoft designs software that allows idiots to make your life miserable! My best advice is to throw the PC into the toilet and go out and buy an Apple Macintosh. You’ll never need another computer, you never switch it off, it doesn’t get viruses or other malware and it makes computing fun and productive again – all without becoming a geek, or paying a geek to keep it working! But if you can't do this, prepare for many happy hours tearing your hair out..."

When oh when is the critical momentum going to change in favour of Macs - as they say has happened now with iPods?? Sheeesh.

Why are Dell's profits so low? They sell crap hardware at higher prices than similar spec (but higher quality) from Apple. They employ almost any tactics to reduce costs, they get tax breaks, financial support from MS and Intel.

Now they are charging $39 to run an anti-malware software program.

Where does the money go?

Hmm....spyware is on ~90% of computers...

Funny how that closely that mirrors Windows marketshare.

Coincidence? Nah...

You have to admit, that is one hell of a business model. LOL.

makes me sick

Let's me tell you were the money have gone to. Go to the man himself and look at where he live and what he drives and what his wife wear and the kids and it all total up to the billions. That what microsoft software get for the PC companys. Just think about it, you the PC user sitting there spending your hard earn money thinking how fast your little crap can run and how many games you can play. But you forgot your PC comes with half the software and hardware for $495.00 ho yea your get a free dvd burner if you act now.( Ha Ha Ha ).So company like Dell and HP get you with the small things like spyware protection and you keep call in everytime to fix this at $39.00 a pop. Let me start a PC company let see I call it Bottom Feeders Computers.*I need to ride around in a nice car or limo with a bodyguard call Bruno and a wife that say yes all the time cause got the money.

" Name for us anything else in history where people clung to the obviously inferior product and paid extra for the privilege of doing so?"

Easy! There's....no, not them. OK, there was...uh, no. Oh yeah, I remember! It was...no.

OK, MDN. You are right again.

Every time when somebody says that Windows is superior I hit with the facts
1) that there is over 90 000 viruses for the Windows and
2) over 29 000 pieces of spyware.
3) Windows gets more than 1000 new viruses every month.
4) Windows is compromised when it is connected to the Internet under 20 minutes.
5) Windows is down 1 months working time (5*8 hours) every year
6) Microsoft has not done anything for these facts in the last 10 years and the situation only gets worse
7) Cost of running Windows in the enterprise world is ludicurously high because of these facts.

As many as 200 pieces of spyware? So there's an upper limit? I don't think so. Just yesterday, a friend of mine ran a spyware removal tool on his family's Compaq and found well over 400 pieces of adware and spyware! It was so much that the checker bogged down and crashed. And yes, he is desperately trying to get his mother to replace that machine with a Mac.

What's really funny to me is when I'm at work viewing this website (on my PC, during lunch of course) I get pop up ads galore. But when I'm home using Safari... nothin, nada zip... it's a beautiful thing.

The link you have posted has a pop up that shows in Safari with the pop up blocker on. NO platform is immune, some are just more robust.

From the article:

George said Dell is working with Microsoft to improve the security of the Windows computer operating system, but said no computer could ever be completely protected.

No Windows computer, that's for sure.

A sign of the times-Last week I took a friend who is very high up in the accounting department at Microsoft to buy her first Mac. She said she felt guilty using her MS check to pay for a Powerbook but she had had enough with the PC virus problem.

Microsoft and Dell are working together to bring you something...

Sounds like a threat to me!

And they say Mac's are expensive?

"....The link you have posted has a pop up that shows in Safari with the pop up blocker on. NO platform is immune, some are just more robust..."

Not when you use .. This

Hey, Caveat - that's not a popup. Check the "Window" menu, and you'll see that it's a dynamic item drawn, undoubtedly, by code in an ad.

Dell working with Microsoft now that a joke . The only reason and I mean the ONLY reason they working together cause if these problem goes on, that mean sales will be going down for Dell. And they can't have that can we.Just ask one of the many DELLAIRES who lost there jobs on sumping sales. The PC world need Microsoft like a baby to a nibble. It's really sad their are so many people so blind in the world. And so many suckers too.

i'm sorry nipple I still HATE DELL and the PC world

Bottom line:

Spybot: Free
Adaware: Free

Learn the facts before sounding off on topics you know nothing about.

Yes we know Spybot S&D;and Ad-aware are free.

But...

Time is money. Even for those "free" programs, taking more time to maintain your PC than working or having fun with it is a total waste.

I emailed Patrick Kolla, author of Spybot S&D;, asking him why he doesn't offer a Mac OS X version of Spybot? His answer?

"You don't need it"

'Nuff said.

"Name for us anything else in history where people clung to the obviously inferior product and paid extra for the privilege of doing so?"...

George Bush

When PC people say they have lots of applications, should we Mac people politely remind them that Viruses don't count?

Btw, there's a huge opportunity here - $39.95 for virus removal? Look up and down your street... how many PC's are there? With the money you make, your local Apple reseller will be asking "So, sir, how many G5's should I put you down for today?"

notatotalsucker thanks for the great suggestion!
I'm lucky enough to be a Mac Tech, but after hours at home I can charge $50 to remove spy and adware, and viruses..... And for the record, my reseller will be asking "Would you like 1 30 inch display or 2 to go with your new G5?"

darknite - you're right... I forgot about those!

Mac with the lot coming right up!

And stay away from IE for Mac too.

P.S. Bless you, tease.

Name for us anything else in history where people clung to the obviously inferior product and paid extra for the privilege of doing so?

The QWERTY keyboard. Compared to the DVORAK they are inferior and designed to slow typist down.

I think beta was superior to VHS.

And American cars for a while.

Oh and computers, the non Apple compatible ones.

Those screwdrivers with the removable heads compared to the real ones.

And CD's. No way is a CD better than analogue.

Did I get any right?

Name for us anything else in history where people clung to the obviously inferior product and paid extra for the privilege of doing so?

Yes, you are correct by mentioning BETA was superior to VHS. The reason VHS won the war over BETA was price. VHS was marketed to have a longer record time; however, VHS lost picture quality when recorded longer. People bought VHS because of the lower price while failing to see the fine print that BETA displayed a better picture. See the likeness of the present situation?

I still think people preferred VHS since it looked like a big friendly audio cassette. Beta only had one spool visible and people found that too unsettling.

Not wishing to be contrary, but the reason VHS won is well known to be down almost solely to recording time. The price difference simply wasn't sufficiently great to be a major determining factor.

At the time, Beta was not able to record a full-length movie from the television (1.5 - 2 hours with ads) and surveys at the time and subsequently showed that this was the major factor affecting people's purchasing decisions.

The (supportable with evidence) contradictory viewpoints about why VHS won relate to licensing issues, and the availability of pornography, not price.

re. Pop-up adverts etc ... Safari does a pretty good job on most of them, but for the ones that get through Safari's built in pop-up stopper, pith helmet takes care of these for me - I haven't seen an advert for some time - it's almost like the early days of the internet - ie. before money became an issue.

Now come on, I use a mac and love it. But can it be realy that bad for windows users. If you have the right firewall and antivirus protection you should be relativly safe right ? I'm guessing the average Joe Shmo home user isn't tech savy enough to defend themselves. But geeze from what I've been reading here and there on the web over the last year or so it's a wonder Apple only has 3% market share.

BOTTOM LINE: Apple needs to advertise Window's spyware and adware vulnerabilities. They need to tell potential Mac users that they don't have to live in the Windows World.

If you are a bit savvy and have time to waste and stick to strict rules with email and web surfing and have an hardware firewall router then you may get close to a decent security level.

Wintel PC users I know have developed time consuming habits and invested in protecting software that make every PC I have seen much more expensive than current Apple offering.
They manage to keep the PC free of viruses and malware but the maintenance cost ($ and time) is something I do not see the vast majority of users doing ever.

Dear Graham,
3 letters: P2P. Well, 2 letters and a number. You would not believe how many people I know that have a firewall and Spybot or Ad-Aware, but thanks to KaZaA, iMesh, Limewire, Morpheus, etc. they also have dozens of spyware programs. The funny thing: when their computer crashes, they say something like "stupid Dell" when they really should say "stupid me".

BOTTOM LINE: Apple needs to advertise Macs PERIOD.

At times these users - effective in protecting themselves against malware of all sorts - do boot just and only to perform those maintenance tasks then shut down again.
Yes, PC users routinely shut down their PC. Hibernation is not at the same level as sleep on Macs. Windows users do not hibernate for days: The uptime is single digit and - for the most - stuck to number 1.

It is a use of the computer close to paranoia but there you have it: Some enjoys that. It gives them something to do in addition to use P2P to download the latest games/applications, read email, surf, play the pirated games.

Talked with a Windows user today who just removed 394 spyware and adware programs. Had to run one anti-spyware program in order to get another anti-spyware program to even run.

Running Norton AV and firewall.

Twenty minutes later, after removing all that junk, the user found 60 new spyware/adware programs.

Understandably, this issue is causing many Windows users to get jittery about engaging in e-commerce, so expect prices to go a bit higher for everything you buy to make up for the deficit revenue.

Smiley, indeed. This nightmare is the hellish world of Wintel users. The ones I know, notwithstanding their routines, simply spend hours weekly to remove stuff from their PC.

The sad fact is that they simply do not believe this does not happen with the Mac. Their take is that we all lie and some of their nightmare - comparable with the smaller market share, the myth of 'security by obscurity' - is experienced by Mac users as well.
My switchers invariably come back to me and say "you were not exaggerating, it is true. None of those malware infect my Mac. I never fully believed that" and blah blah blah.

Poor bastards.

Seahawk,

The dangerous ones are the PC users who are in denial-- the it-won't-happen-to-me syndrome because I use/I do/I have installed_____.

Then there are those who do nothing at all to protect theirs or anyone else's PCs. This kind of stuff affects us all, even if indirectly.

Pity the poor potential switcher who's too afraid to do business on Apple's website because malware has made him so afraid to use his credit card online that he can't get past the paranoia to buy the Mac that will liberate him.