(chris) NiXoNbyname.com   the way i see it

After reading this post questioning whether antivirus software was a virus in itself, I was prompted to let you know my experience.

A few weeks ago, a guy at work came into the office and asked me to help him speed up his computer. This first thing I did was try and remove Norton Antivirus. I’ve always found this to be a horrible resource hog, and there are better solutions available for free.

No matter what I tried, the PC wouldn’t let me uninstall any part of the software until other parts of the software were removed first. Classic malware behavior. Eventually I gave up and looked for a solution on their website. It turns out their Norton Antivirus Removal Tool is the most downloaded software on their site. I’ll let you make your own judgements about that.

After about half an hour I managed to get every last trace of the software off his PC, and got a huge increase in performance.

Forward three weeks…I get a phone call from my colleage saying he is now getting bullying pop-ups from Norton on his PC telling him to update his Norton Antivirus. What a disgrace! The only solution left in my armoury was a fresh install of XP.

In my opinion viruses are a scare tactic used by big software companies to peddle their wares. Do me a favour and follow this advice.

1. Don’t install big-name antivirus software. Stick to something like AVG.
2. Don’t visit dodgy web sites….you know the ones.
3. Don’t open dodgy email attachments.

If the worst comes to the worst and you still get a virus after all that, you can be safe in the knowledge that it won’t be as bad as having antivirus software killing your PC.

Alternatively…buy a Mac.

I am looking for Mac/PC folder sharing advice. I have a shared folder of .avi files on my Media Center that I want to add to from my Mac. When I try to copy the files across, OSX tell me I don’t have write access.

Sure enough, when I look at the folder on the PC it is marked as “read only”. I unclick it and hit apply, and all looks fine. However when I look again, it has marked itself as “read only” again, and I still don’t have permissions in OSX.

I have tried accessing through OSX using my windows log-in rather than as a guest, but this appears to make no difference.

Can anybody help?

Update from Pownce:

In the next couple of weeks, I will buy my first Mac. My laptop has been playing up over the last few months, and I’m generally sick of Windows. I just want life to be easier. I thought I’d methodically look through what I actually do on my laptop, and what I want to do, and see if I can get some free advice (that’s a hint to you, dear reader) on what software I should use once the ’shiny thing’ arrives.

I spend most of my laptop time on the net. So I suppose I should think very strongly about what browser to use. There are two obvious choices in Safari and Firefox. I use Firefox just now, and one of the features I like most is the ability to sync my bookmarks across computers. From what I read, Safari is more stable than the current version of Firefox but I think I’ll stick with what I know (how very boring sounding) just now, and see how I get on.

I obviously do a fair bit of blogging. In the last couple of months I’ve really grown to like Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer, but what are the options on the Mac? Should I be going for free software, or should I fork out some dosh. I’m really stuck on this one. I use hosted WordPress.com blogs, so it’s important that whatever I use is compatible with that.

I want to be able to edit my photographs on my new laptop. I currently use Photoshop CS2 for Windows, but I’d like to use something different on the Mac. I find that the handling of RAW images in Photoshop is a bit clunky in CS2. Is this the same in CS3? I want to be able to edit my images, then export them as jpegs for sharing on Zooomr. What is the advice here? Should I stick with Photoshop, or should I be using something like Lightroom?

I currently use iTunes on the PC, so that is an obvious port across to the Mac. Is there an easy way to do this? I would like to retain my ratings and play counts as I have spent rather too much time getting these ‘just so’ and I don’t want to have to go through the process again.

Because my current laptop is an early Sony Vaio, it can’t play divx. Sony blame, and divx blame Sony. I get about 10 seconds into a divx video before I get a BSOD. I think it’s a video driver issue, and Sony refuse to update the driver, so I’m updating away from Sony. Do Mac users use divx video, or do they tend to use the newer H.264? What are the advantages? I’d like to do a bit of video editing on my Mac. Am I best to use the built-in software, or look elsewhere?

Well that’s enough questions for now. I’d really appreciate any advice that people have on these. I’m obviously going to do some research myself, but hearing real people’s real experiences much more valuable.