I know some of you still use that inferior Gatesware garbage that accumulates viruses and bugs galore just by surfing the internet. Thank god I am a Mac owner. I laugh while others flounder. I surf free from pain and aggravation while you fret clicking on ABCNews.com or Drudge to find out what the latest bug will be to pop into your system. However, be advised I am not here to gloat, but to offer some friendly advice…ok, and gloat too.
First DROP INTERNET EXPLORER. It has more holes in it than a Michael Moore flick. The virus hackers have placed execute files into the pop up ads that persist in crashing your computer. Switch to Firefox. It is a Mozilla browser that is more user friendly, customizable and more importantly, protects your computer from thos viruses by blocking the ads to begin with.
Second, get Hijackthis and ad-aware. Even the best browser can let stuff in or at the least, you have a latent infection that you don’t know about. Hijack will give you a list. Copy the individual names and google them to see what they are. If they are important: cross them off the search function (ignore). If so, you can delete them via the program.
Lastly, delete IE. Simple enough.
Happy surfing.
You can’t really delete IE. It’s part of the operating system. You can delete the shortcut from your desktop and pretend it’s not there, but the program is here to stay. Spybot is also good anti-adware.
Its part of the system? Holy cow what a scam!!!
Here are links to some websites for alternatives to Internet Explorer, courtesy of the NYT
Mozilla Website for Windows, Mac OS X
Opera website - for windows and Mac OS X
Apple’s free default browser for Mac OS X
Netscape for windows, mac
If you really want to get away from viruses, worms, adware, pop-ups, blue screens, etc., you can also switch to Linux. I’ve been using Linux as my primary desktop for the past 2-3 years and it’s been great.
If you need to run some Windows apps, you can either run a “dual-boot” system and simply reboot to Windows when necessary, or else you can use a free tool called “wine”, which means “windows emulator” and comes with Linux. For enhanced Windows compatibility, someone sells a product for $40 called “Crossover”. Using Crossover, I can run Microsoft Office 2000, Finale 2001 music engraving program, EFax fax reader, Internet Explorer (for those few web pages that won’t work with Mozilla), Taxcut, Winzip, and Photoshop.
Most of the time, though, I use native Linux apps to do my work and they are good enough. OpenOffice is about as good as Microsoft Office for most purposes, Gimp is about as good as Photoshop, and so forth. These programs keep getting better and in a couple of years I expect to not need any Windows software.
Linux comes with a graphical user interface (actually, several to choose from) that makes it about as simple as Windows to operate.
I do have a Windows laptop for those few apps which simply don’t work under Linux, such as my multitrack recording software. Laptops still tend to work better with Windows because of the specialized device drivers they require, but that’s changing as well.