Saturday, February 18, 2012
danger, will robinson
since it's probably a crap-shoot as to when a computer would become infected, i wonder if it would help to turn off your computer when you're not actively on it, like when you head for bed or leave the house. dang these hackers, taking away all my fear-free fun and changing my innocence!!!
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For what it's worth, my story:
ReplyDeleteI still use the computer I bought in 2005 with windows xp. As I think I've said elsewhere, the only things I've changed about it are to swap secondary hard drives, RAM, and video card. I also in the past year got an external hard drive because mine was filling up.
I've also only ever had my ISPs' complementary antivirus/firewall software. Maybe I'm a lucky duck, but other than a temporary scare the last year of grad school, I've been totally fine. And unless my computer freezes, I don't shut it down (or technically, restart).
I think if you have competent software running (the ISP here uses the "Avast!" suite, which I hadn't heard of but seems fine), whether or not you're on the computer doesn't matter much. It's true that I always have Process Explorer running (basically what Task Manager should've been) so that I can at a glance see what's running on my computer. But other than gleefully ending irrelevant processes—like all the printer-related crap that autostarts even though I don't have it hooked up—I don't really use it for much more than informed amusement.
My main grief against Macs is that I want to know EXACTLY what's running on my computer whenever I want. I have no idea how to see that with Aimee's Mac, but I can look at it in a twinkle with my PC or my Linux box. I think if you can at whim check to make sure everything's ok, it helps reassure you that everything's OK while also providing the level of control you might need if something goes wrong.
But then again I'm a nerd.
okay. and that's waaaaay more than i know anything about.
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