Anti - Virus

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Macs may be resistant to virus, but malware/spyware is a different animal. Ran an anti-spyware app and found several on my MBP.

and none of it can run on OS X...
You should quit accepting such questionable emails, and stop cruising those.... Less than savory sites.

 

[kasakka]

My take on the whole antivirus thing is that you don't need it even on Windows, IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. I haven't had a virus/malware scanner running on my Windows systems for years and guess what? Every time I run a few scanners just to make sure they come up with nothing.

In my experience antivirus software is often more harmful than the malware it protects from. My work computer (using XP) takes something like 5 minutes to start because of all the F-Secure crap we're required to run on it. It's also noticeably slower than my home computer in use despite having somewhat similar specs. I don't even want to think how bad it would be if it had Norton on it!

By far the biggest problem is always the user. There are people who will eagerly click all "bigger penis here" or "you won $1M" links, install "britney_spears_naked.exe" without blinking, use Internet Explorer etc. The antivirus software is there to protect the computer from the ignorance/idiocy of these people. Don't take me wrong, these can be entirely normal, smart people in general but when it comes to computers they just manage to totally **** it up.

I do like running a software firewall though, even on a Mac. That's mostly just because I like knowing/controlling what apps are connecting to the 'net though.

 

[miamialley]

Don't forget to leave the system on from time to time, so OSX can do the house keeping for you.
Try to avoid all those so-called utilities, they only good for lining the MacOS trash and thinning your wallet.

What do you mean "leave it on." What does this do and how is it helpful?

 

[kastenbrust]

As long as you backup your work and O/S your fine, with both Windows and MAC OS X, the amount a virus scanner will slow you down compared to how often you can get a virus and take time to cure it isn't worth it, for example a virus scanner may reduce your productivity by 1 day a year, but getting a virus wont take 1 day to fix, so you may as well forget having a virus scanner, unless your an addict of...less desirable websites.

 

[J the Ninja]

Don't forget to leave the system on from time to time, so OSX can do the house keeping for you.
Try to avoid all those so-called utilities, they only good for lining the MacOS trash and thinning your wallet.

What do you mean "leave it on." What does this do and how is it helpful?

Your Mac has some little maintenence scripts it runs in the middle of the night. Open up your terminal and type in "man periodic" (without the quotes) and hit enter to learn more about them. If you want to check whether they are running on time, use this command:

ls -l /var/log/*.out


Don't forget to enter after typing that in. It will show you the time they last ran. If any are off, you can force them all to run manually with this command:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly


You'll need to type in your password, and you may get a warning about the "sudo" command if you've never used it before.