Well, the 250 GB external hard drive has arrived, and the Mac Mini should be here on Halloween. Last weekend I made a Herculean effort to get RHG’s computer (Gateway P4 2.0 – GHz) to a) work and b) access the Internet. I had partial success with a., but the Internet access was more challenging. I finally resorted to downloading IE7 to a thumb drive and installing it. No luck. The best course of action at that point was to reinstall Windows XP Pro, the unintended result being that I reformatted the hard drive, lost everything not Windows-connected, and was still Internet challenged.
Plan B. was to replace the whole box with Real Wife’s old machine (Gateway Celeron – a real piece of crap) which since new has been afflicted with the silicon version of Alzheimer’s disease. It could, however slowly, access the Internet, but her games simply would not run. I virus-checked it with no results. After being driven crazy with RHG’s boredom, I told her to use Real Wife’s computer when otherwise not in use. Understand that RW’s computer has Norton Internet Security, is update automatically every night, and is virus scanned weekly. To make a long story short, I spent the better part of last night rebuilding the Windows registry. Something caused a Norton error that read “TCP/IP Not Installed”, meaning that incoming email was not being scanned. This came after RHG reported that Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events kept locking up with some sort of email screen. I suspect this was somehow related to her Hotmail account, although Instant Messaging may also be a culprit. I got everything back up to speed (including getting rid of programs that were mysteriously self-installed such as Weatherbug and MyWebSearch), and promised Real Wife that RHG would be forever banned from that computer.
Plan C was to tell RHG that she was getting her birthday present early. I realized today that I do not have a USB keyboard, so I had Real Wife pick one up during her weekly 20 mile track to Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, it has bells and whistles that require that it be used in a Windows machine. I will therefore try to borrow a keyboard from work until next week or, failing that, buy one from our local Dell “Superstore” (yes, in a town of 2,500 people we have a Dell Superstore). I don’t particularly care for the proprietor (or Dell for that matter), but it will work out because I can tell him that I only need the keyboard – I bought the computer elsewhere.
Which brings me to the point of this post. It should be apparent that there is a common thread to this and related posts by yours truly. RHG is a pox upon every computer she uses. I love her dearly, but there you have it. I’ve looked at the history of her usage, and all I see are typical web sites that an early teen would be drawn to like a moth to a flame. I suspect that malware practitioners using human engineering have targeted her demographic. Hence the Mac choice. In addition to a different OS, I am now pondering what other safeguards are appropriate. I know that Norton offers security software for Macs, but is it necessary? I realize that the threat will increase as Macs become more popular, but I would rather not pay for another subscription until I have to. Nothing on her machine is mission critical, so I suppose I can afford to be a beta test for the first widespread Mac virus outbreak (RHG may disagree, but it’s my AMEX card). The real question is whether that threat is a) already present, or b) imminent. I’ll spend the money if it is well spent, but it is just one more thing to keep track of. I am taking other precautions as well, such as migrating RHG from Hotmail to Gmail and looking for alternatives to IM (I am guessing that a mass migration amongst RHG’s circle will please many other parents, and perhaps significantly reduce the revenues of our local computer superstore (many of which are derived from near terminal malware infections).
On a related topic, I’ve spent the remainder of the weekend doing work-related patent due diligence. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve downloaded IE7 and installed it on all of the machines in my domain. I know, I know, IE is considered to inferior to Firefox et al., and many of you will probably tell me that its use is probably the root of my problems. Nonetheless, I like IE7. Patent due diligence requires simultaneous access to several on-line databases, as well as a word processor and spreadsheet, and everything worked smoothly. I particularly like the tab system, where you can have multiple web pages open without clogging up the bar at the bottom that shows what programs are running.
Tomorrow after work I have to patch the tube on RHG’s bike. Finally, a project that is a more traditional “Dad Project”.
I don’t know about the mini, but the MacBook comes with iChat installed. I haven’t played with that much yet.
iChat should be on it, it’s a standard program for Macs. Since there’s no built-in camera, Photo Booth does not come with it (same as the MacPro), otherwise the software suite is the same as the iMacs and all the “Books”.
iChat is part of the mini’s software suite.
Radar
I happened upon your post. Reminded me of my weekend with my sons’ “game PC”.
I personally use Symantec as well and find it works well with few glitches – BUT particularly their most recent version. You might want to upgrade to it if you haven’t – they’ve made huge improvements.
We have one Mac at home for my oldest son, and the thing has worked flawlessly – no issues from going online, although we avidly police his online activities.
A side-note:
One thing to be sure of: WeatherBug and the WeatherBug Browser Bar do not self-install. You or someone in your family had to have decided to install it. When you upgrade to IE7, the WeatherBug Browser Bar (if already installed) does add the MyWebSearch branding to the toolbar for some odd reason (The WeatherBug Browser Bar is a product of WeatherBug and Ask.com, and MyWebSearch is a search brand of that company. How do I know this? I’ve run the WeatherBug consumer business for the past five years. We also work for the government (things like plume-dispersion modelling in case of an airborne terrorist attack), as well as schools, energy companies, first responders, and TV stations. But we also offer our website or installable application for free to whoever wants access to our private “WeatherBug Network” of live streaming weather reporting stations across the country.
On our site, we provide links to lots of software that helps get rid of adware/spyware/virus’/pests, but I generally have been pleased with Symantec at home.
Andy
One valuable thing about Mac – it no longer comes with IE. The Big Gates Company stopped developing IE for Mac when Safari came out; this is not usually a problem. Much of the malware is IE specific, though not all. (IE 5.2 can be found – it does work, still, but I believe MS no longer has it available for download.)
I’ve had better success with McAfee Virex than with Symantec Norton, at least since OS X 10.4 – again, Symantec chose not to migrate the product to the new OS.
Just as with XP, do not let ‘ordinary’ users run as an administrator. Not everything requires admin privs to install, so that’s not a complete solution, but if an invader can be limited to one user rather than everyone, it can usually be stamped out.
And use DiskUtility (in Applications / Utilities) to create an image of the whole disk, once you have accounts created. Park it on one of those external drives. When the inevitable occurs, you have a complete backup which you can restore onto your just-erased internal disk.
Andy, I don’t entirely buy your comment. Actually, I don’t buy it at all. If Weatherbug is so innocuous, then why does a google search “weatherbug adware” return 119,000 hits? I also noticed that others on your staff respond to criticism with almost the same wording (even to the point of trotting out your alleged involvement with DOHS). The bottom line is that there is big bucks in online advertising, and you folks have set up a well oiled machine that a) hijacks users computers and b) conducts a full court press to monitor reports of a) and emphatically deny same. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
I think most readers of this blog would agree that anything that manipulates the user interface, adds software, or the like is a bad thing – regardless of whether it meets your definition of spyware/adware.
By the way, Thanks to Timmer, Yak and JohnS for your feedback.
If you need tabed browsing, Safari.
This my first Internet adventure on the Mac Mini. So far so good. Installation was a breeze. It immediately saw my wireless network and logged on without a hitch when I entered the WEP encryption key. The MiniMate external drive hooked right up using the supplied Firewire connection.
Now if I can figure out how everything works… (RHG is greeting trick or treaters so I have 2 hrs. to play)
McAfee/Symantec/etc. are a huge waste of money on a Mac – you don’t need them, and considering how much they tend to screw up PCs when you install it I wouldn’t let them touch my macs, much less pay them to do so.
Free advice, probably worth what you pay for it, but we have 6 Macs in our house and don’t worry about it at all… and I am the most paranoid computer security person I know.
So far the only thing Virex found for me was a Word macro virus. However, with a slightly growing user base, it may become the case that malware writers find more satisfaction attacking OS X. Virex is pretty benign; very little impact on my home Macs.
I admin a small Mac lab at the college I attend; I’ve set Virex to run every time out student users log in; there’s not much stored on those machines, so it runs rather quickly.
Given the agony I’ve had trying to defend Windows machines, I see an anti-virus program as relatively inexpensive insurance, even if, for the moment, the risk is pretty low.