frugalfurguy Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 I use a fossil-vintage Mac. It won't allow me to upgrade to OS X. That means my choices for virus and personal firewall are pretty limited. I managed pretty well last November. But I just discovered my virus definition subscription had lapsed. So today I tried to resubscribe. From their accents I guessed that I was talking to customer service representatives somewhere in the far east--India, the Phillipines. But somehow I couldn't arrange anything. I'm beginning to wonder if they're using child labor. It was just so hard communicating with the representatives, and sometimes it seemed to be not so much a language barrier as cognitive development. Geez! Sure hope I'm not doing business with a company that's THAT labor-exploitative. If so, they should reconsider. I spent hours today on toll-free lines, didn't get satisfaction. They didn't make a sale. Maybe they're paying their workers barely the plus side of zilch. But even at that if all their customer interactions are like mine, sooner or later they'll run out of revenue even to pay barely more than zilch. I feel frazzled, I feel pissed. I feel sad. I wonder if I've been dealing with children who're doing their utmost but still not mature enough to handle the job that's expected of them. I feel worried. Am I going to have to buy a new computer in order once again to have virus protection? I won't mention the name of the vendor I was trying to deal with so as not to drag the Den into any responsibility for pejorative comments. I wanted to vent, though. frugalfurguy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Most credit card companies, solicitations and many other services are doing this. recently myex moved to her (our) house in Seattle and I helped her set her computer back up. She needed to get her email service transfered to her new address with her old MSN service. We spent an hour and a half with a woman in the Phillipines who spoke very good english but the moment she came on I knew exactly where she was from and yes she was calling from there. The time was partly the nearly hour wait on hold [800 number fortunately] and it wasn't her fault it took so long. Her account had been mistakenly cancelled when she moved. OFF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Worker 11811 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 If you're using OS 9 or OS 8 then you are pretty much virus proof. You don't need any virus, trojan or spyware protection. The ONLY virus I have EVER seen in real life on a Mac is one called "Sevendust" (AKA: The 666 virus.) It doesn't even really damage your computer. It just causes you to crash. Furthermore, somebody actually devised an anti-virus virus against Sevendust. Thus, the only real viable virus for the Mac community is the one virus that KILLED the first one. I manage 15 computers at work and two at home. The only ones that have virus protection are the PCs at work. The three Macs don't have anything. Bottom line: You don't need virus protection on your Mac. Don't waste your money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Or if you want to get a PC use Linux I have no virus protection. Even with my email on Thunderbird. Spam and Trash goes screaming and spiralling into the flaming pits of digital hell soon as it comes in. OFF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynxette Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 I have two computers in my library/office. One a pc that I use on the internet, and the other a Mac for my writing. I just prefur the Mac in all ways for that purpose, but maybe from what I am hearing I should be using it for internet as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Worker 11811 Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 What vintage is the Mac? What operating system? I use an iMac DV (400 MHz) at home. At work I manage two Macs, one is a 2 GHz G5. The other is a 2.6 GHz "CoreDuo" machine. The two Macs at work use 10.4 (Tiger). My home computer uses 10.2 (Jaguar). I also own a 600 MHz iBook but it's been out of commission for over a year due to a dead hard drive. If you have an older Mac that uses OS 9 or earlier, you are 99.99% virus proof. Nobody goes after computers that old anymore. If you have a newer Mac using OS X, you're probably about 90% virus proof. There have been some attempts to compromise OS X but Apple has spent a lot of time and energy keeping ahead of the hackers. There have been one or two "Proof-of-Concept" alerts, whereby somebody publishes information on a theoretical method to attack a computer but they have been squashed. One of them was published by a company that sells antivirus software. People at Apple proved that the virus was bogus and that it was just a thinly-veiled attempt to sell virus software to Mac owners. The other one was a minor vulnerability that was fixed by Apple in a software update even BEFORE the alert was released to the general public. I'm sure that, someday, there will be a successful attack but, until now, there have been no successful attacks. If your computer can run Firefox or Safari you should have no trouble getting on the internet with it. If your computer is running on OS 9 or OS 8 there are some browsers you can use that are better than M$. In any case, there's no reason you can't use the Mac for anything you do on the internet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 Our Mac G5 at work uses Tiger. We have no virus protection on it either and CAD Girl uses her Yahoo email on it yet!! My partner with his WindowZ PC gets viruses all the time. OFF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 Greetings from Chigagoland on the other side of an all night charette. Yes, we have fur weather. Yes, it's spectacular here. Yes, I've been awake for 24 hours...but I had to chime in. From 1993-2002, I used PCs exclusively. My first virus wiped my hard drive when I was in college...then I got a "kak worm" (?) in '98 and had to "debug, format and f-disk". Pure telephone tech support hell. At that point, I didn't even trust the legalized extorti...er...anti-virus companies to protect my stuff. I used external hard drives, zip disks, and CDRWs to store everything until...I started using Macs in grad school. My flat-panel iMac, which still survives to this day, at my Mother's house in Pennsylvania, has not caught one virus in nearly five years of use. My macbook pro doesn't even have anti-virus... va bene! J. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynxette Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 Yes Joe, that sort of confirms what I have been hearing. I think I will keep the two machines seperate for their purposes though, as when I am at the Mac I am set to work, and here it is fun time. Sorta helps to prioritise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frugalfurguy Posted February 16, 2007 Author Share Posted February 16, 2007 Joe wrote I didn't even trust the legalized extorti...er...anti-virus companies Yeah, I sure did get extorted. So what's there after all to the internet than a world wide extortatorium? I'm tired of innovation for the sake of speeding obsolescence and all the inconvenience it brings about. So I'm here at the moment as one grouchy denizen. Thanks for letting me share it, and you didn't cause it. frugalfurguy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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