Thread: Windows7 a Con? Well it comes from Micro$oft

Originally Posted by 350RRC

I can't believe how PC users put up with all this nonsense, unless they're closet masochists. The Aulro AVG thread is another classic.

BTW everything in MS Office for Mac runs just fine on my Macbook.

cheers, DL

You are forgetting that for many people it's a form of enjoyment working on a PC fixing things. They feel as though they are learning things, and they are. Ergo the more problems MS can pack in a release the more fun they have.

For many others they flame any OS that is not windows without any experience of them because they are ignorant and inexperienced.

And there are many others that earn their living from supporting MS products, and dislike other products that are relatively trouble free or require little support. There are whole empires that would crumble if they were without the justification that MS continues to provide..

I spent over 17 years in IT and hate having to fiddle with PC's to make them work. No OS is without it's issues but the ability of Windows to go wrong is far higher than everything else available. There's no denying a Mac can fail but the likelihood is a lot less than a PC. Mac's have OS updates just as frequently as PC's.

As for hardware, any computer hardware can fail and a HD failure isn't pretty if you don't have a good backup.

That said though I have seen first hand the significant reduction of computer issues with every one I know who has switched to Mac in the last 18 months. I think one of the key reasons for this is the fact Mac OS has some much bundled within it that you have get some third party software to use on Windows (most significantly Backups as mentioned).

im running windows 7 ultimate, and so far have not had one problem with it, it is way way faster then vista, start up and shutdown, all my programs have installed with out prob, got conected to my net work first go,

i will be deffnetly instulling it on my other pcs

Funny, I have had only one problem with my Vista Home Basic and that was that IE pages would not print.

It mysteriously fixed itself about a week later, presumably because of an update. I contacted Microsoft and a very helpful but ultimately unsuccessful young Thai guy emailed me on several occasions, so I judge their customer service to be OK.

The load time is quite quick if you disregard the time that Trend Micro takes to load and AFAIK the need for virus protection is mainly because MS has 80% of the computer market and hackers get more satisfaction by wreaking the maximum havoc on the greatest number of users. I also suspect SOME of the hackers may be "Mac boys" out to prove the superiority of their system and spending a LOT of time doing it as it is their only life.

If you have slow boot time then disabling the start up of the extras such as Adobe will speed it up. Ironically the latest Trend 2010 has a tune up included which speeds up everything but their load time.

I am still happy with my $499 HP , considering that a Mac laptop would cost something like $1700.
Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Funny, I have had only one problem with my Vista Home Basic and that was that IE pages would not print.

It mysteriously fixed itself about a week later, presumably because of an update. I contacted Microsoft and a very helpful but ultimately unsuccessful young Thai guy emailed me on several occasions, so I judge their customer service to be OK.

I'm glad you're having a good experience.

Originally Posted by PhilipA

The load time is quite quick if you disregard the time that Trend Micro takes to load and AFAIK the need for virus protection is mainly because MS has 80% of the computer market and hackers get more satisfaction by wreaking the maximum havoc on the greatest number of users. I also suspect SOME of the hackers may be "Mac boys" out to prove the superiority of their system and spending a LOT of time doing it as it is their only life.

If you have slow boot time then disabling the start up of the extras such as Adobe will speed it up. Ironically the latest Trend 2010 has a tune up included which speeds up everything but their load time.

I wasn't going to reply to this post until I read that. I've picked myself up off the floor now though and wiped the tears from my eyes. That is one the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. There are about 75 million users of OS X now. Are you really seriously saying that there is no one out there who can be bothered writing a virus for them? Not even one? Really?

Sorry, it's just too hard - that's why no one has done it. Viruses are essentially an MS problem, sorry.

Originally Posted by PhilipA

I am still happy with my $499 HP , considering that a Mac laptop would cost something like $1700.
Regards Philip A

I sincerely doubt they are two comparable machines. But, I have to concede that Apple HW is more expensive than low end hardware that runs MS. However I think that overall the Apple systems have a lower overall cost of ownership when you factor in time taken to maintain them, and expensive MS software upgrades...which I think was how this whole thread got started.

Anyhooo... I better get going and write some more viruses for PC's...

EDIT: I just passed this onto a developer friend of mine (for MS BTW) and he says it's actually LINUX users, because they have so much spare time now that they don't have to wait for windows that they can bang out a couple of viruses a day. He also tells me the problem with writing viruses for windows is that it's so unstable that it crashes and then your code gets discovered.

Originally Posted by bruiser69

Unfortunately the majority of the expensive applications that I run will not under Mac OS.

Just as a matter of interest, like what?

I use, from work, a Mac Book Pro with Snow Leopard. I have also installed Parallels with Win7 Enterprise without any major issues but I have not really done much with it yet. It is all running under 32 bit mode.

Booting Win7 seems quite snappy and there do not appear to be too many issues so far.

I have found Snow Leopard to have some important changes to, for example, networking protocols and management that are very annoying. The new AFP in Snow Leopard is not backward compatible with Leopard for a number of good reasons but it now means that connecting to my G5 I have to address its IP address instead of its computer name. Another example is gcc, which defaults to the 64 bit version of the compiler. In the greater scheme of things these are mere annoyances and certainly not show stoppers.

Together I think they are a good combination if there are applications that you need to run under Win7. If you don't want to run under emulation then install using bootcamp on the Mac.

Alan

I wasn't going to reply to this post until I read that. I've picked myself up off the floor now though and wiped the tears from my eyes. That is one the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. There are about 75 million users of OS X now. Are you really seriously saying that there is no one out there who can be bothered writing a virus for them? Not even one? Really?

Well if you consider that modern viruses are often aimed at monetary gain eg phishing etc then perhaps its not worth it to write viruses to Apple because commerce rarely uses it.
I just did a search to try and find the names of major companies using Apple outside of design, academic institutions etc without success.

Perhaps you could advise me on major banks , financial institutions etc that use Apple.

BTW there is at least one person writing viruses for Apple.
Apple Trojan returns to haunt Mac users - mac bugs, trojan - Computerworld

a quote
""Mac users are pretty unsavvy as far as security is concerned," said Peter James of Intego, who reckoned that many still Mac users run their computers unprotected, despite numerous warnings.
"As Mac market share is increasing, malware is increasing proportionately," he said.
Intego, of course, admits that it has a vested interest in publicising Mac malware, including drive-by Trojans such as RSPlud.E. Nevertheless, the fact that Mac users are now facing the sort of Trojan programming threats regularly experienced by PC users should alert them to the importance of the issue."

Regards Philip A

Originally Posted by PhilipA

Well if you consider that modern viruses are often aimed at monetary gain eg phishing etc then perhaps its not worth it to write viruses to Apple because commerce rarely uses it.
I just did a search to try and find the names of major companies using Apple outside of design, academic institutions etc without success.

Perhaps you could advise me on major banks , financial institutions etc that use Apple.

BTW there is at least one person writing viruses for Apple.
Apple Trojan returns to haunt Mac users - mac bugs, trojan - Computerworld

a quote
""Mac users are pretty unsavvy as far as security is concerned," said Peter James of Intego, who reckoned that many still Mac users run their computers unprotected, despite numerous warnings.
"As Mac market share is increasing, malware is increasing proportionately," he said.
Intego, of course, admits that it has a vested interest in publicising Mac malware, including drive-by Trojans such as RSPlud.E. Nevertheless, the fact that Mac users are now facing the sort of Trojan programming threats regularly experienced by PC users should alert them to the importance of the issue."

Regards Philip A

Sorry mate, that's been plugged. It isn't technically a virus either. When virus software selling companies start going on about it she's usually a FUD. Check here.. there are less than an estimated 50 infections in the world and that includes the windows version... LOL

As to big enterprises that use them... well despite what you might think I don't actually sell them so I don't know. I wouldn't expect it's the type of thing that companies would really make known externally. I do know of a number of security gurus that work for companies like Google and they all use Macs...

Personally, if I was going to roll out something other than windows to the corporate desktop I'd use LINUX and save on the huge corporate fees that MS charge and sack the empires of support people required for MS products.... At any rate... I'm not sure what the relevance is.