Windows 7, PLEASE tell me its secure.

[island911]

How's that saying go... When EF Hutton speaks, people listen.

i'd say, listen to this....

Originally Posted by widebody911

I'm one of the most anti-windows guys you're likely to meet, but I'm grudgingly giving Win7 a thumbs up.

aside;

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

...

A Macbook Pro is my next purchase, without a question. They blow the PCs out of the water.

"without a question" eh?

Well, I will say the Macbook pro is a very nice machine. But it's not w/o fault. Off the cuff I'll say that it handles SD cards less elegantly than most PC notebooks. First, when you put one in (a MB-Pro) it sticks out. ...then, put your macbook back into your travel bag with that SD-card sticking out, and see how things go. Of course you can just pull it out . . . WAIT! . . . did you do the proper software eject? . . and wait?

Stupid. "without a question"

edit: PoP, You can think of me every time you deal with that SD card handling. ...hope your not much of a photo hound.

[gtc]

Just get a Mac. They can't get viruses.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by gtc

Just get a Mac. They can't get viruses.

You forgot to make that green.

You were kidding, right?

[gtc]

Yes.

But I get that line constantly from people with Macs. It drives me crazy.

[mca]

I'm sure some are out there but I've never seen a mac with a virus and i've been surrounded by them for 10 years.

[stealthn]

Is it better - Yes, is it Secure - no

There are about 300 new vulnerabilities found each week, those are the ones that are found, so just think, it's better than it was, but get AV and turn on the protection within 7.

(As I write this on my new Macbook Air)

[Joeaksa]

Switched the desktop over to W7 six months ago. Still figuring out some thing but all in all like it much better than XP.

Would rather eat dirt than use a Mac. My copilot has one and is always asking to use my Dell to get something done.

[imcarthur]

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

Still figuring out some thing but all in all like it much better than XP.

The new menu bar was my biggest challenge - especially with 'once-in-a-while' legacy programs. The search box at the bottom has proved useful. Of course, I could link to them from the desktop or pin on the taskbar but I don't want to clutter them too much. As an ex-mid-level Window's power user, W7 suits me very well.

Office 2010 is much, much more of a learning curve for me, but it is proving to be a pretty powerful suite of programs.

Ian

[azasadny]

Keep it patched, as well as any other applications you have (Adobe Acrobat, etc...), run Microsoft Security Essentials (free) and MalWareBytes (free) and you're all set...

[Schumi]

Macs are becoming more and more vulnerable to virus attacks due to the ever increasing popularity coupled with user's assumption that they are invulnerable. My experiences with macs are that when they do contract some virus or spyware, it's even harder to get rid of than a window PC because there is no fix availible- unlike a windows PC where you can just type your symptoms into google and several hundred other people have the same problem and have figured out how to fix it already.

[stomachmonkey]

Exactly which Mac viruses did you find more difficult to get rid of.

The security thru obscurity argument is complete BS.

Prior to OS X there were hundreds of Mac viruses. Apples market share was also smaller. In the 10+ years that OSX has been out no viruses in the wild.

What makes more sense, that the people responsible for the pevious viruses all decided to retire the same day or that OSX is simply too tough a nut for them to crack.

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

What makes more sense, that the people responsible for the pevious viruses all decided to retire the same day or that OSX is simply too tough a nut for them to crack.

Did you mean to put that in green font? OSX is BSD based with a pile of nasty JRE engines tacked on. I don't think there is anything easier to hack than JRE, or BSD for that matter.

Plenty of sites dedicated to OSX spyware and virus removal. And, yes it's not easy for the average joe to remove this stuff.

MacScan » Macintosh List of Spyware, Keystroke Loggers, Trojan Horses, Backdoors and Malware for Mac OS X

Current threat list

iAntiVirus - Threats for Mac

OSX is like Swiss Cheese, we can't even get a PCI certification for it in the business world.

[stomachmonkey]

Funny lists.

You do realize that those are lists of mostly legitimate software?

Many of them commercial apps that you pay for?

The majority of them are physically installed by a human sitting in front of the machine.

They show up as security risks because, well it's nice to be able to detect if your spouse has installed a keylogger on your computer.

Apple Remote Access even made the list. Ohhhhh, scary app.

The Trojans that I recognize from the list tag along with installers from pirated software or other non trusted sources. Why would you expect criminals to provide legitimate products?

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by Scott R

I don't think there is anything easier to hack than JRE, or BSD for that matter.

Ack. OSX is not BSD.

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by spuggy

Ack. OSX is not BSD.

The kernel is, at the core BSD. XNU is built on BSD, and is a standard POSIX environment kernel. You can view the GNU public license that Apple used for it.