Why I Have Macs For My Personal Computers

Why I Have Macs For My Personal Computers

I'm not going to get into a bunch of trivial arguments concerning Windows vs. Mac but as I write I sit next to a friends computer that I am trying to purge evil ad-ware, spyware, and viruses from. He had McAfee, Ad-Aware, SpyBot, and CW Shredder installed and STILL got bit. I'm presently, as I type, installing Corporate Symantec Anti-Virus to try and get the thing straightened out.

I read the other day that the average time it takes for 50 % of unprotected Windows computers, connected to the internet, to be compromised is 12 minutes. While the Dell next to me chugs through a deep scan for viruses, I'm typing away on my iBook that doesn't even have anti-virus software installed. That has to say something for the platform. Now, let me stop and give props to effective protection. Properly protected, and maintained, your Windows computer is safe and secure - I administrate over 25 computers at work and we have had two compromises in the past year - both forwarded e-mail viruses from a workers home computer to their account at work. Both were detected and quarantined by Symantec.

I like my Acer Tablet PC, I LOVE my iBook. It just works. Simple.

I have my favorite add-on programs which I use regularly. They make my life easier and my computing pleasurable. Here they are:

Two are from the same company: Ranchero.

NetNewsWireLite 2.0 is a RSS reader. I have 107 feeds at present that I can view and peruse without visiting each and every website or blog. Slick, fast, and free.

MarsEdit 1.0 is the program that I am now using to manage my blog - It rocks. You can read about the features at the website.

Here are some others:

SpamSieve - what I use to keep Entourage clean and free of spam. It's trainable and scriptable. Need I say more?

Recently I have been using Sync-Entourtage and AddressBook to keep my contacts between my two main applications up to date. This enables me to use Spotlight for contacts and lets my .mac back-up stay current also

Acquisition is a mainstay for all of my P2P file sharing needs.

That's it for now. If you have a Windows machine I feel your pain, especially if you get invaded, infected, or compromised. I just prefer the OS X platform. In a year or so, now that Apple is moving to Intel chips, we may be able to run both platforms on one machine - that would be so freaking cool! We'll wait and see.

WH