Just doing some virtual venting. I spend more time troubleshooting my 3 PCs than actually being productive with them. This comes at a time where my wife’s laptop had over 1700 privacy/security infections. It basically has been throwing up system errors every few seconds and started to crawl to a halt. The machine has 2 firewalls running and Norton Suite!
Then my main XP workstation started acting weird - I couldn’t launch some programs and Ctrl+Alt+Delete wouldn’t launch. I would have to hard reboot and the same thing would happen. Again - multiple firewalls and still finding privacy threats and Trojans within my system.
Another $30 later i have yet another Spyware program running on my machines. I am constantly scanning for malware, viruses, trojects, spyware, etc…and most of my 2GB of RAM go to these programs. I barely have enough RAM to run the programs I really need.
Anyway - vent over…for now. My next machine will be a Mac - no more PCs for me.
That’s not strange at all - everyone who has a PC will begin to suffer from a gradual system-wide slow-down until it crawls and then begs to be put out of its misery. I used to love my PCs and swear by them - but over the last 10 years I am completely frustrated by how much time is spent scanning, quarantining, fixing, protecting, defragging, installing, uninstalling, patching, updating, lifting up and dropping, throwing, shaking, banging and yelling at them.
I know what kind of mac i want and it is just a mater of time.
Oh and that’s not all - 3 years ago I bought a top-of-the-line Dell Inspiron 17″ notebook with all the bells and whistles. About 2 months ago a very annoying 1 pixel vertical line appeared through my display. I googled it and found that this is a very common problem. http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/04/09/10675.aspx
I called Dell only to be told my machine is out of warranty and that it would cost me a minimum of $500 to fix and that my money would be better spent on a new machine.
WOW. Dell admitting to faulty hardware and their product of having a shelf life of only 3 years or less. Amazing. Unnacceptable. That may be my last correspondance with Dell - even though I recommend their machines, I can’t get past this 1 pixel verticle line as I have to stare at it every damn day.
I so love you for posting that cartoon!!!!!!!! Aside from the sticker shock, your life will just be so less stressful if you have a Mac. My boyfriend who has for a decade called my computer a “Crapple-tosh” just shocked me and ordered the Macbook Air !!!!!! (damn it, that’s newer than what I have - MacBook Pro) I guess my daily glee whilst working was just pissing him off. LOL. I’m sorry PC peeps, I am just trying to be funny….. by the way, you can make payments. That’s what American life is all about.
aw, come-onnnnnnn, you know you want that shiny new “MUDBUBBLE PRO” (wow, love the interactivity you gave the pooch over at your portfolio site!!!! I feel some games coming along!!) I wouldn’t be surprised if you already went out and picked up a couple of those bad boys by now. (well, mine’s a girl) P.S. - I have found Apple (and GDY.com have THEE BEST customer service reps America has to offer.
I got my Macbook Pro last July, and I absolutely love it, before that I used to only use PCs, but I got so fed up with them that I got a Mac, since I mostly use Adobe products and they all work on Mac there was no issues. Wacom also works great on it. Also, Flash player runs really well on Intel Core 2 Duo machines so there’s not much worry about that (It runs a bit slow on my gf’s G4 iBook). So total convert I guess. I have Boot Camp installed so I can still play the odd PC game if I want to.
Honestly though, I don’t regret buying it one bit and would highly recommend one to people who just want to enjoy using their computer and not have to waste time and energy on system maintenance.
Just a note, when you test a Flash movie it runs a bit slow from inside Flash for some reason, but it runs a lot smoother from the finder with the Flash Player.
I have a G5 quad, but the playback in flash is really quite slow. I know this is a common headache for flash users running macs, however things might be different with the intel macs.
Apart from that, everything else runs much better than it did on my PC. Basically, once you’ve had Mac, you’re never go back.
Completely agree, I can’t stand to use my girlfriend’s windows laptop as I’m used to using my G5 iMac. It’s about 4 years old now and it’s still running like the day I bought it, nice and fast
While the Mac has some clear advantages, their support is quite shoddy as well. It seems to be a larger trend of companies not backing their products. Apple’s default support plan is one year, and even within that year, it’s tough to get decent service. The phone support forces you to take the machine into an Apple store before they’ll receive it for warranty repairs. I was just lucky that I’d recently moved to an area with an Apple store. I’ll spare you all the minor details, but basically Apple fought tooth-and-nail to not fix something that was clearly malfunctioning and clearly under warranty. Then they tried to charge me for aspects of the warranty service and could not provide me with any details on what they had fixed. Do a quick keyword search if you want more examples of shoddy mac support, they’re all over the net.
I’d love to see the Adobe apps on an open-source platform. I’d switch in a heartbeat. There’s a great Linux laptop called the EE that costs a few hundred dollars, and the OLPC organization has put together a fantastic $100 machine for children around the world that ships without the bloated OS (which means it requires far less memory to run, and has fewer reasons to crash).
All that being said, if I had to buy a computer today, it would be a Mac. Though it would be because the frustrations that Chris has described above have happened to me more (so far) on a Windows machine than on a Mac, and not because I really want a Mac. And generally I work in an industry that’s skewed toward Macs. Really just a lesser of two evils at this point.
Also, with Parallels able to run Windows on the Mac, there’s no need for a separate Windows machine.
sorry to sound rude here but this is fucking bollocks
wa wa wa windows sucks
mac rules
could we stop behaving like we were 5 YEARS OLD, please? just stop whining about operating systems and stop being so god damn ignorant (this goes to every operating system basher even though mac people prefer to whine about how crap windows is. get a life and do something PRODUCTIVE instead).
thank you very much.
MarkPOrter - easy on the language please - no need for it - and being “productive” is the issue here - I am not being ignorant or childish or without a life when I tell you at least 30% of my time throughout the course of the year is spent fixing, repairing, cleaning or reinstalling windows or programs across 3 windows machines. It has been this way for years and everyone else I know who uses PCs complains about the same issue. Last week I was over a friends house for the first time in years and they have a PC in their kitchen. My friend was asking me about what can be done to fix it. i asked what was wrong with it and he says that it has simply been slowly crawling to a halt for the past year and is basically unusable. Now I know this could be user error also - but not once has anyone with a Mac ever complained about the same issues. Sure macs are not perfect and I admit this conversation is a little biased - but there’s simply no need to start acting belligerent towards those who chose to share their own experiences here. If you run Windows and have a success story - let’s hear it - we’re all ears
This is just a conversation about people’s preferences of one platform over the other. I believe in freedom of speech and everyone’s opinion counts - even yours, but there’s no need to approach everyone with such a harsh and degrading point of view.
My Windows success story is this: I bought a P4 1.5ghz PC in June 2002. I installed McAffee Internet Suite the day I bought it and never seemed to have any problems with security (although I’m equally sure that no computer, regardless of OS is truely safe). This year I bought a new PC, but only because Im greedy - my old PC still worked just fine and I never had to repair, maintain or recover data once in almost 6 years.
Also I should say that having multiple antivirus, spywares and/or firewalls generally does more harm than good - there is no extra benefit for using those precious resources and they can confuse each other.
I know you’ve made your mind up already, but just thought I’d post this up - PCs aren’t all bad.
: )
Point taken mikie - and I agree with you - I used to praise my PCs also, for years and the main reason I am PC based is because Flash always ran 10x better on them compared to the Mac - but lately my 3 XP machines have all been suffering from a laundry list of issues. Every week it is something else - the last 4 days my laptop suddenly can no longer print because i get an error that the Print Spooler is not starting. I have googled it and fixed the problem from the info I have found - but then suddenly the problem pops up again. At times my network sharing folders are disconnected for no reason - I reboot the modem, wireless hub and all machines connected and it still won’t work after working flawlessly for a year. After 3 hours of researching, troubleshooting and restarting various kinds of hardware, I then run scans only to find a trojan file somewhere on my system that my 2 anti-virus programs and anti-trojan programs let slip through the cracks. I’m just frustrated because I need my machines up and running 24/7 without the need to spend 1-2 days out of every week trying to solve technical IT issues. I know this can be a heated topic when arguing about which is the better platform and I have always regarded platforms as the old Ford vs Chevy debate - they are both tools that get you from point A to point B - but for me, after 10 years of using PCs, it’s time for a Mac - if not for the reason to be cross-platform as well. I probably will always have PC in my arsenal, I’m just guilty of using my own website and you as my captive audience to vent some frustrations.
I do apologize to MarkPorter if I reacted harshly - I just don’t want this conversation to become a personal attack between each other’s character.
Hey Paul, if you use Boot Camp then Windows is on a separate partition to OS X and is completely separate and won’t affect OS X in any way what so ever, it’s like a separate computer. So if you got a virus on Windows or Windows stopped loading up properly, as long as it’s not a hardware fault then it won’t affect the OS X partition at all. Since you’re booting into Windows it will run at 100% since you aren’t running Mac OS. But running Windows on a Mac won’t make it more secure, you are just as likely to get infected if you were using Windows on any other hardware.
I’m not to sure how software like Parallels works since I haven’t used it, but it boots into Windows while you’re in Mac and sort of emulates Windows so you can use Mac and Windows at the same time, Windows doesn’t run at 100% speed this way since your computer is running Mac OS at the same time and emulating it. (I’m not sure emulating is the right word, so I’ll probably be corrected by someone)
Hey Chris. Not sure if this was made with a PC too, but your MSN sent me an automated virus message today.
Tried to get me to sign into a website and “find out” who is blocking me on MSN. Sounds familiar? Not sure how you could get rid of it… What’s dangerous is it could be checking what kinds of passwords you write down on sites. Be careful…
A lot of friends on PC have been sending me these types of auto-messages.
Fakepilot - I am a victim of this as well - not sure how it got sent through me but i always avoid MSN messages from someone i don’t know. Again, perfect example of PC vulnerablity - all my ant-virus/trojan software didn’t pick it up. Oh well. Now I am sure something has infected my system once again after 2 days of cleaning it out from last week’s invasions.
Hi Chris,
Well, PCs (windows machines) are the dominant anyway. From your description, your pcs’ problem seem to be caused by the many security programs you have in your pc. My machine run flawlessly with winXP, one antivirus, one antimalware period.
If you used to work on (windows machines), believe me, I bet you WILL abandon mac and come back our world.
Fakepilot - i just ran a scan using Housecall and it found an unknown object named “MS08-007″ - I googled it and found this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-007.mspx
Yet another critical vulnerability and this time the attacker has complete control of my system and the ability to view, install, run and delete programs as well as create new user accounts with admin rights - this kind of stuff makes it REALLY hard to stick with PCs as my main production platform
Mustafa - thanks for your input - I really don;t have that many programs running - I have tried almost all of them at one time or another. My latest firewall is from Sygate and it’s an older version that doesn’t come with every bell and whistle like the bloated Norton Firewalls do. I find many security programs are overwhelming my system with various types of applications all trying to protect every aspect of my machine - from IM to email to browser and beyond. The result is, these security apps tend to take up so many system resources I can’t run any of my productivity programs too long before having to restart 3 times a day.
There was a while where both of my machines ran flawlessly - with the occasional hiccup here and there But the past 2-3 months it has literally been non-stop troubleshooting and scanning of all my machines. I’m sure i will always have a PC running for testing, but as far as my dedicated platform, I am emotionally drained.
I agree with Chris. I always thought Flash ran slightly better on a PC. Though I’ve been working exclusively on a new Mac with CS3 for months now, and have not been bothered. Though CS3 still has some crash bugs.
Parallels does mount a separate hard disk. It just does it “live” while you’re in the Mac OS, so you don’t have to reboot and you can switch between the two instantly.
I’m running Windows through Parallels on a Mac Pro with 768 MB of RAM allotted to Windows (XP) and it runs as fast or faster than any Windows machine I’ve had. It should be noted that the computer is a quad-core with 4 MB of RAM, so it’s no slouch.
Since I’m only running Windows when I need it, it presents a much smaller security hole than running a Windows machine.
I’m running an HP and absolutly love it. Wish I could say the same for their printers… I bought 1, exchanged it because it was having some print cartrige error, they gave me a new one, that one kept telling me that its rear acess door was open, exchanged that one, so I’m now on the 3rd printer -count ‘em- 3 of the same model printer before I could find one that worked… It’s a “HP Officejet Pro L7600 series”. Psh. Now this one isn’t letting me print wirelessly. But I do love my laptop!
As for Norton… I won’t touch Norton with a 20 ft. stick. My last computer came with Norton installed on it (same as this one, but I was quick to take it off), then one day some message came up on my computer screen and then the computer crashed very quickly after that. Norton is one of the most popular virus softwares out there, so most viruses are written for Norton. Yuck.
Love my PC. Don’t know why people have so many problems. I haven’t seen a blue screen of death since 2000. Never had a virus. I like the updatability and the amount of software for it.
I was close to getting a Mac, since the VMWare fusion would allow me to run some of my essential windows apps not available for OSX, then the PC laptop industry smartened up and actually started creating some pretty laptops. Still not as pretty as Mac Book Pro, but I’ve been on a small form laptop for years similar to AIR, but half-the price (and half the beauty), but all the functionality (or more).
The only thing I really hate is when the new machines come, the hard drives need to be formated and the OS reinstalled because of all the crap software the manufacturers install.
Oh, and the other thing I’m jealous of OSX user is Quicksilver. I’ve tried all the pseudo-windows equivalent and yet to find something as nice.
divinglizard: yeah I have heard great things about HP machines from an IT friend.
Alex W: I am looking at an 8 core Mac Pro.
todd: I went a long time without problems and I think my luck has simply run out all at once. First it was the verticl pixel through my display after only 3 years, then all the network connectivity problems, then i had the biggest problem with sound drivers on my main workstation, oh the list goes on and on. I agree there’s tons more software for PCs and I can’t really function without one - having a Mac makes me cross-platform which ain’t all bad.
I admit I have been pretty hard on the PC world the past few days - and I admit to using my own site as a soapbox to blow off some steam - but it is good to hear what everyone has to say about this issue.
I’ve never had problems as severe as you are having — and the only protection I used was ZoneAlarm firewall and SpyBot S&D. I’m also pretty suspicious and don’t fall for the spyware scams out there (though I do have some very intelligent friends that have).
Macafee and Norton slow down your system in general. Uninstall them, use Spybot or AdAware to check for Spyware periodically, and only install a Virus Protection program if believe you have a virus (ZoneAlarm will tell you when any spyware/virus attempts to connect to the internet).
Also, go out and buy DiskKeeper — defrag software. Helps me a lot (I still have some PCs as well).
That said, I love my Mac Book Pro, though I am probably going to continue to use the Windows partition to do all my Flash Dev work — lack of a good AS3 Editor on OS X. I would worry about timing issues as far as animation goes — not sure about the latest player, but animations generally seemed slower on OS X. I have another license for CS3 for OS X through work, so I’m trying to see whether that’ll work out for me. Otherwise I have my own on the Bootcamp partition.
One infuriating thing: Due to the way Adobe has it’s accounting set up, while you can have CS3 on two computers (so you can have one on say, your laptop and one on your dektop), they have to be the same OS. You have to go through some hoops to switch from a Windows to a OS X license, and while that’s easy in theory they have managed to make it an insane chore for some people.
I just wish Apple would come out with a desktop in-between the Imac and the Mac Pro. 8 cores is overkill unless you are doing some pretty heavy video editing or tons of floating-point calculations (which I am doing, but the dual core is working out for me).
I have used a lot of MACS and I have FAILURE stories about those. THE OS used to really annoy the hell out of me and every day I would find something new about MACS that just makes lifes a pain in the…back. Let’s just say the OS is VERY user friendly: You don’t even have to tell the OS to close a program for you because it will do so for yourself- even without asking and even if you hadn’t saved yet. My programs on XP don’t crash. I can’t remember when an Adobe program crashed for me on XP and I’ve used many PCs running XP. I’ve also used A LOT of Macs running OSX and all Adobe prodcuts would crash on me all the time. In fact even the whole Mac would crash on me. That never happened to me on XP. In fact I first wanted to write a book why I think XP is nicer than OSX. there are just way too many things that are terrible about Macs but HEY I am not like the mac stereotype who want to force their believes onto anybody. CREATIVE people seem to use MACS- THINK DIFFERENT. Hey creative people. how about you actually think different and use WINDOWS but hey whatever you prefer. Overall the winner should be linux because it doesn’t crash but I am not nerd or geek enough to operate Linux. Also there are way too many distributions so I don’t even know what Linux version to pick. So well the bottom line is: I thought apple would be better than windows. I’ve used many apple machines and it was a terrible experience and slowed me down like hell. The navigation is so fast on XP. VISTA is a horrid nightmare. If you like Apple- fine. IF you like Windows- fine. Whatever makes you happy but BOY there are so many apple fan boys. Microsoft is just a company and most people don’t like it while Apple is like a RELIGION and people whoreship Steve Jobs. thats just wrong.
Hi MarkPOrter - how long ago and what version of Mac were you running then? I’m just curious as the main reason I have been PC is because of what you said - programs like Flash especially, run so much faster on PC - I have seen this first hand so often.
I have avoided Vista because of the horror stories I encounter all the time and I’m confused by all the different versions of the same OS. Plus, XP has really worked well overall. I just think lately I have hit a bad luck streak - so far the past 3 days I have been issue-free and back to normal. I’m actually getting work done again
“programs like Flash especially, run so much faster on PC” yeh so why use a mac if its faster on pc?
ive used macs at 7 different companies from 2004-2006 (all running OSX and some machines were very fast and new and overall all machines were good enough to handle photoshop/illustrator/in design) and they all crashed a lot and closed programs by themselves and other awful stuff. there are also tiny details i just hate but thats a matter of taste i also cant argue about anymore since i dont sit infront of a mac every day (thank god). its just stuff like typing in an address of your folder and going directly to that folder. i know what my folders are called while on a mac i have to click and click and click until im finally inside my folder- how slow. i also just LOVE my taskbar and the fact i see all FOLDERS and programs in there. i will have at least 10 things in my taskbar at once while if i have 10 different folders in the dock i wont be EASILY able to tell which folder is what so i have to F11 (or whatever key it is again) to bring them all on my screen and find the right one of them all- bring it up and disappearing again and blah. its all just so much faster on pc. i know the name of my folder- i know its place in the taskbar. one click and i am done. also i just hate how flashy OSX is. it feels like operating an OS coded in action script with all those motion tweens and other animations. i already hate the VERY FEW animations XP has like the animation you get when you pop up a window. im glad you can disable that. i dont think you can disable ALL SPIFFY animations in OSX at least i was in the systems settings and turend everything off you could but still you would get shiny animaitons. talking about shiy animations: Microsft REALLY tried to rip off Apple with their VISTA. its so TERRIBLY SHINY and you get all those horrid animations. I just want to use a computer/a tool and I rather make my own animations so Apple’s animations are very disturbing and annoying but at least kind of stylish and not horrid looking while Window’s animations are lame rip offs of the stuff Apple does which fail to look good. We have one apple at the company where I work for now and I’ve already heard some bad things about it but I don’t know. No computer is perfect so there we go. Apple certainly creates some GOOD programs when you look at Final Cut and Motion and all their programs. Also Apple/Windows hate never helps you at all. Many big tv stations use apple computers because of final cut so one day I will have to use a Mac OS again so either I hope things will have changed by then and everything will be “spiffy” or I just learn to live with the things that annoy me and ignore those. One thing that’s BRILLIANT about OSX and I love it is the feature to tag files- windows seriously needs that. There is some program for windows which lets you tag your files (I love it) but I’ve been told it slows down (didn’t notice that myself at all) things. Oh what also always annoyed my on OSX is cycling through folders. Like say you have a file called Beards and other files that start with B so Win you press B until you find the Beards file while on OSX you will only get the first file that starts with B (Banana) but it will never cycle through all the other B files like Win does. Now any Mac person might suggest I just search for the file (great if I don’t remember the exact name) also a person might suggest I just sort everything by name and then I can go through all the b files but I rather sort my files by date. Its just this really tiny and silly thing but it makes life a little bit more complicated and then OSX is full of all those little things and combined I’m just faster on XP. ALSO it bugs me I can never get program windows to be 100% fullscreen. You always get to see a tiny bit of your wallpaper. I’m sorry but such things just distract me like hell.
That’s reminded me… The place where I work has PCs mainly (for the photographers) and the 2 graphic designers use macs (for posters, leaflets and such like). Until this year.
It was decided that because the macs have become so unstable (within 2.5 years of purchase) and basically arent really network friendly, at least on our internal network, that they will be replaced with PCs this year. The mac operators are fuming mad because they love ‘em regardless of the faults - that’s both a good and a bad thing, and niether.
I’ve been building my own PC’s for 6 years now. I have to say, thats the only way to do it. When buying a retail PC, it comes standard with tons of crap you don’t need that bloat the system from the get-go. Chris, you should definitely not be running all those firewalls, you should only have one firewall, and the default Windows firewall is perfectly capable, and non intrusive. You should only need one anti-virus program running at all times. You do not need an anit-spyware program running at all times, however, you should have a free one like Ewido and just do a scan every week or two. What you should do is go here http://forums.g4tv.com/forum.jspa?forumID=64 sign up, and post the problems you’re having, they will more than likely have you run a hijack this log, and will totally clean you up. Very smart people there. Now, as for Mac vs. PC, which is a very touchy subject. I’ve worked on PCs all my life. Not until recently did I start to use Mac and PC side by side. So, for about 2 years now I’ve run both side by side every day (excluding weekends). There is a major difference in the two. All Adobe products just scream running on a PC, no problems, and very smooth. That can’t be said for the Mac side until recently. Up until CS3, Flash was incredibly slow, quit unexpectedly quiet often, and overall performance was lacking. Now that CS3 has been released, there are many improvements in that aspect. The IDE is much more responsive aside from the debugger failing to launch often times. There is a major difference though in the performance of Flash Player on the PC vs. Mac. The Mac runs much much slower. I always know that if my app is running smooth on the Mac, it’s gonna be incredible on the PC. Above, there are to many comparisons to laptops vs. desktops and those comparisons don’t make sense at all. You can’t expect a laptop to ever match the performance of a desktop. Other than all that, Macs are nice don’t get me wrong, but they have equal amount of problems that a PC does. Not to mention a hefty price tag. You can build a screaming PC for $1500, and I mean top of the line that would out perform a Mac any day. Do you want to do that though? A nice new shiny Mac does sound like the solution to your problems, but it really isn’t. Anyway, just my 2 nickels.
Wow - this IS a touchy subject - this entry has way more comments than any other entry ever. Between MarkPOrter, mikie and dzedward, I could be swayed in my platform decision. dzedward, I like the idea of building my own machine. I am pretty familiar with how they work and I have swapped out cards and hard drives enough times to feel pretty comfortable building my own. That sounds like a definite possibility.
Thanks to all for your opinions on this subject.
Update: running just the windows firewall (thanks dzedward) and uninstalled everything I do not need. Cleaning out the registry and doing other general maintenance. I also disabled themes to get the most out of my RAM - I don’t mind the older “classic” windows look at all - no frills - clean and simple. I am turning off all of the device drivers I do not need at startup (my laptop had close to 80!) - especially the Maxtor auto-sync programs for my external USB drives. I prefer to just plug them in when i need them and drag files over manually - I don’t need bloated software automating this for me - sure my mom may prefer pop up menus to guide her along the way - but I’d rather avoid these pesky apps running in the background and back-up when I want to backup.
Everything seems to be running smoothly again and as for the annoying pixel line through my display - i found a dell web page with contact information that may end up resulting in Dell sending me a replacement display (fingers crossed - I’ll believe that when I see it).
I may put off getting the mac and try focusing my pennies on a Cintiq.
I have a Ti powerbook (for some personal use) and xp notebook, plus all we use at work are PCs. I have to agree that both platforms have issues but the one issue that has not been shared is malware vulnerability. But I don’t know how much this is true with the new versions of OS X, I stopped upgrading my machine at Panther. On the PC side, one of my friends always recommends to make sure that all the drivers are up to date. On the other hand, I have found that many times the problems that I encounter are related to microsoft xp upgrades. So as a result, my first course of action is typically a system restore and it usually fixes the problem. There have been times when I’m working on friends machines that have been infected, that the only course of action is to back up and start fresh. Then there have been the few times that it’s best to take the HDD out, get a new HDD and then copy over just what is needed. I agree with the multiple firewall comments, I have also found them to be conflicting with each other more than helping. Not sure what your network is like but you might benefit from a firewall like the ones that are made by watchguard or other manufacturers. And yeah, flash does run slow on my mac vs pc
Chris, I’ve been on the pc side of things my whole life. I just bought a mac a month ago. I couldn’t be happier. I switched for all the reasons you’ve shared. I too lost about 30% of my time to my pc. It was terrible. Then I made the switch to Vista, which was an even bigger mistake. After two brand new Vista laptops (HP & Toshiba) both of which had some terrible problems, I gave up. I couldn’t even print, for Pete’s sake. Took me three hours one day to try to print to a shared printer and I never got it working.
I couldn’t be happier. Did I say that already? I used to get so annoyed with the Mac guys who whined about how amazing their computer was. I’m afraid to admit I’m one of them now. And I’ve only had it a month. Haven’t had a single problem. Each day I find something new on this thing that makes me happier and happier. Don’t change your mind now. Switch. You won’t regret it. After all, you can still run XP using Boot Camp.
That’s what I’m going to do tomorrow. Install XP. Though to be honest, I’m less and less sure I want to. There was one app I used on Windows that wasn’t available on the Mac and they released a beta version of it for MacOSX last week.
Oh, yeah. Did I mention that it connected to my network printer out of the box? And my network, both at work and home? And the apps built into it! Unbelievable. You should check out some of the videos I’ve made for my classroom kids. Silly homework announcements, but they love it!
Productivity since I made the purchase has been 100%.
I just installed CS3 on it yesterday so I can’t really talk yet about how all those apps run on it. A little slow, I imagine, since I’ve only got a gig of RAM. I’ll upgrade it soon.
No problem chris, I really recommend posting on that forum I gave a link to, they will thoroughly clean your system, like starting fresh. I don’t see how people have so many problems, I have a home built machine running the standard windows firewall, a standard anti-virus with no bells and whistles, and have not once had a problem with my machine. I run a server off it as well so it’s very important to me that it stays in good health. Just by being safe when surfin the internet, you can really decrease your vulnerability. I also recommend this http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ffmedia.html?cid=21638&gclid=CKbGyIuUrpICFSTLiQod_hgfNg as a nice little addition for firefox, so when you do a google search, it’ll tell you what sites are good and what are bad. Just using safe practices you shouldn’t ever worry about virus and maybe the minimal amount of spyware.
@ Jake: That’s just it, you’ve only been using your Mac for a month.
@dzedward: You’re right, of course. Just sharing my experience to date. We’ll see if I’m crowing this much a year from now. Time will tell. I do, however, have a number of friends in the web developer field who made the switch years ago. It is very telling to hear them say things like, “The ‘aha’ moment for me was when I looked back after three years of using a Mac and realized I’d lost only an hour of productivity during those years.” I don’t think I’ve met anyone using a windows box who can say the same.
Man, this is such a hot issue. What am I doing weighing in on this!?!?!?
Chris, my only concern here is that you keep working and enjoying your work!! Keep belting them out!! That makes SO MUCH me happier than touting about my 20 years of Mac.
Having read this entire page the solution is clear to me now - you will need a mac for your (beautiful) left hand, and a PC for your (fast) right hand.
PCs VS Macs hahaha this is funny. Hey Chris, I bought your book, I’ve been using flash for a couple years now, and think your book is awesome! Can’t wait for the second edition, I will definitely buy it. As for Pc vs. Mac, to me, like you said, they are just tools. Those people that say macs are not problematic are WRONG! I have a PC at home, unfortunately running Vista, I prefer XP, my older computer was awesome with XP, and am using a Mac at work, and I’ve had some issues with flash, and the way it handles program windows, minimizing and bringing to the front and stuff. I hope you resolve your issues though.
Thanks Ramiro, I think it’s time to update this entry by saying i am about to pull the trigger on building my own PC. I have given this a lot of thought and since all my software is PC, and Flash simply runs faster on PC and since my main issue with PCs is all the bloated unwanted software that comes with them - building my own will give me exactly what I need. Thanks to Dzedward (www.flashgods.org) I am using http://www.newegg.com to build a screaming PC for almost 1/2 of what I would pay for a machine from a major manufacturer.
I’d still love a Mac - but the price tag is simply way to steep for me right now - every time I price out what I need, it’s well over $4500 not including the software I’ll need to get for it.
I recently switched from windows to linux. I was doing the dual boot thing for about 1 week and decided to zap xp totally. I freaking love it. I build my own pcs and use linux. I just wish all the big computer manufacturers didn’t include a windows license agreement.
I’m going to be building my own new pc sometime in the next week or so as well and I was wondering what specs you are going to be going with for yours?
The processor is currently not in stock at newegg but I am checking Microcenter and other places. I haven’t ordered the parts yet but about to pull the trigger any day now.
Looks like a little powerhouse Chris…
Just one thing - I’m sure I read somewhere that XP only supports up to 3gb Ram(?) If anyone can confirm or deny this for me I would be really happy ‘cos I was thinkin’ about adding some more. You can’t have TOO much, right?
Mikie9191, i believe you are correct - Dzedward informed me of the 3GB limit with XP - the 4GB of RAM costs $99 and I couldn’t find a 2GB stick and a 1GB stick that matched - besides, I would probably only save about $10? Unless of course having 1GB too much will cause problems - that I do not know. I may research this more.
I googled the 3GB RAM limit and found a wealth of info that seems very consistent in that a 32-bit OS such as XP can only support 3GB RAM - 64-bit can support a whole lot more. So perhaps I will change my mind and specifically install 3GB and not 4GB.
Hey chris, the best way around this, and to maximize performance, is to get 2-1gig sticks and 2-512sticks. You want to take advantage of the dual channel support, so dont want 3-1gig and leave 1 slot open. All I know is you’re going to be totally happy with you new comp. The overall performance of a home built vs manufacturer is just night and day.
Thanks again Dzedward - I updated my list with new RAM components. I read all about Latency as well - but overall learned to simply go with a reputable company (in the case Kingston) and make sure all memory sticks match. http://www.keyframer.com/custom-pc.html
I forgot to mention, I used the Drag tutorial in your book to create a sticker like animation on my homepage. The drag was the foundation of my idea, and I added to it, and successfully got a sticker that peels off and on, and you can drag it anywhere. Its’ really cool to be able to tell you this, and know you will read it. Anyhow keep up the good work man, and wish you luck on building your computer so you can keep rocking out some cool flash work.
Ramiro Olmos, thanks for letting me know! Glad the tutorial helped
So the first component arrived today - the Thermaltake Armor Case and it is HUGE! It’s also mostly metal and heavy! Exactly what I always thought a computer case should look and feel like. It came with 4 fans, one of which is 120mm in size! Anyway, I already feel like I made the best possible decision thanks to everyone’s comments here - especially dzedward! I should have been more specific in the title of this post - “I will never buy another PRE-BUILT windows machine again!”
I am going to document the buildup with photos and writing - perhaps it will be a chapter in a future book someday
I have worked in the IT industry for 18 years. I have managed 10’s of thousands of PC’s. Personally, I have several servers and 5 PC’s at home. All XP SP2. Our organization runs McAfee and Adware, but I use Grisoft AVG at home and a LinkSys firewall/router. I run 4 Adobe CS3 apps at home and in the 4 years that I have had Comcast broadband and 5 machines and 2 servers up 7/24 - I have had 1 virus infected file that tried to sneak through and AVG caught it. I have no downtime - other than a 3rd party video card that went bad in one machine.
Chris, I don’t know how your home office is configured, but if you just have a hub that is riding a hot unprotected internet connection, then you are totally exposed and that would explain why your PC’s are getting infected. I would suggest getting a router with a firewall and then rebuilding your boxes clean and then before installing anything - go to Grisoft and install the free version of AVG. You can evaluate it and then purchase it if you like it. AVG integrates with Windows perfectly and it also sniffs all inbound email ( which is where I suspect that the majority of your virus issues are originating. ).
I know its a lot of work to start over clean, but once a Windows box’s registry is compromised, its almost impossible to repair and performance does degrade over time.
Use only one Anti-virus app on your PC and off-load the fire-walling to your router and use NAT ( Network Address Translation ). Its built into firewall capable routers.
I once tested an old laptop and for fun and I connected it to the hot side of the firewall ( unprotected internet ) and it was infected in 5 minutes. Internet bots were hitting it and port scanning looking for vulnerabilities as soon as it was plugged in. Thats why hardware fire-walling is critical - Not software. While software can provide a 2nd level - its what is stealing your PC’s performance because its sniffing ALL traffic that your PC sees on the wire. I would only install a software firewall on a laptop that will be connecting to public or unknown networks.
… One additional note. I was at a conference last month and asked if Adobe was planning on porting their apps over to Linux - and at this time Adobe has NO plans to make any of their major product lines available on Linux. Having said that - there may be some virtualization products that may allow Windows runtime “bottles” that will run Windows based apps on a Linux box.
And - for all you XP folks that can’t stand Vista ( count me in on that one ;() ) you can still get XP licenses from major vendors - like HP and Dell till the end of 08. After that MS is pulling all sales of XP to the public and will only commit to supporting XP till sometime in 09. That date has yet to be formally announced.
For XP - the end is near. About 18 months away unless the MS Mothership has a change of heart. At the conference I was at - it was clear amongst IT managers that Vista is a total loss and no one that I spoke to was looking at it seriously, which may pressure MS to extend support into 2010. We’ll see. There was also rumor that Vista will be essentially scrapped and that the internal MS focus will be on the next gen of Windows ( Windows 7 )
Chris - you are hooked into Adobe - do you know of any plans to port products like Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, etc.. to a Linux platform?
@ThePhoenix,
wow thanks for your insight - my router is from Verizon (FIOS) - model is from Actiontec and is WEP enabled. As to it’s firewall capabilities, I am not 100% - need to look kinto that next.
I just finished building my new super computer and all-in-all it was a pretty smooth process. It’s running a fresh copy of XP, 3GB RAM, and the CPU is running chilly at 17C and the overall system is at 32C (not under load at system idle) - that is quite amazing! This thing has 5 fans (counting the video card fan). The CPU fan itself is a monster!
I have not installed any programs yet - just been updating the BIOS and various drivers. I am amazed at the quality of each of the components! Comparing them side-by-side with my old Dell is laughable - the Dell simply looks small and underpowered - I will take some photos soon because this thing is as beautiful as CPUs get (imo). The GeForce 8800 video card alone is the size of my foot!
Thanks again to all for your advice
Happy as a clam!
Chris - your system sounds like a real screamer. To protect it, get a router with a firewall. Talk to Verizon and they may suggest a few models that work best with their system. WEP is just an encryption schema to prevent other wireless devices from attaching to your personal network. Its not related to virus or other types of port scanner attacks looking for vulnerabilites. If you really want to lock down your network, I would trash the wireless stuff and go to CAT5 or 6 ethernet. Considering your vast collections of creative capitiol - it makes sense to protect it. Routers are anywhere from 80 to 200 bucks for home useage. You can get into the $500+ cost range for more sophisticated stuff, but its not really necessary.
Best of luck with the new system. Look into AVG anti-virus as well. The base product for 40 bucks provides virus protection and adware/spyware capabilities too.
@ThePhoenix,
I have detirmined my Verizon FIOS router (ActionTec) has a firewall - I log in using an IP address and have 3 firewall control settings (Low, Med, High). It is set to “Medium”:
Inbound Policy: REJECT
Outbound Policy: ACCEPT.
I ran some traffic tests using hackerwatch.org and all ports were reported as invisible to the outside world. Feeling good about my web securty overall.
Thanks again.
Cool - sounds like you are ready to rock. Have you upgraded your fuse panel in your house to run your screamer? Sounds like one killer machine. Now I want to build one… See what you started. Be well.
Yeah - the house panel was upgraded about 3 years ago from 110 to 220 - i will take some solid photos of the case and components soon and post them - i just installed the Adobe Master Collection and running Flash all afternoon. The most noticeable difference is that this machine shuts down and starts up lightning fast - reboots within 45 seconds and Photoshop/Flash launch within 5 seconds. i am not used to this! My previous desktop took 18 minutes to startup :p (no joke).
lol - You have upgraded from a Ford Escort to a Ferrari. You may want to get seatbelts when you are working :).
I am watching your Lip Sync tutorial from your Adobe Breeze sessions. If you might recall, (or not … lol ) I sent you an email a while ago right after I bought your Flash CS3 cheats. It was about the nested mouths in Graphic Symbols. Its a sweet technique. The one thing that I like to do is to use filters on my chars and you cant do that with graphic symbols. So my chars are a mix of graphics and movie clips. I just revisited this site over the last week or so and you have added a lot of content. Very helpful by the way. Very cool stuff. I was just kidding about the fuse panel - but I’m glad to hear you are amp’ed up… Phil
Chris Georgenes (jor-JEE-ness), started life like most humans, covered in placenta and with minimal motor skills. It was not long before he learned how to use both hands and feet as a groove-oriented drummer in a variety of rock bands. Upon standing fully erect, Chris attended a fine art school and received his B.F.A. Years later someone invented the Internet and then another person invented Flash. Riding on the coat tails of these two individuals, Chris was able to carve a unique niche for himself using both tools. His self-taught animation experiments were the stepping stones of what has become a regular source of income.
Hey Chris!
Why did you stop telling us things we don’t know?
=)
And it’s not the machine, it’s the system, so …. the system
milchreis at Mar 20, 08 at 1:09 pm
Just doing some virtual venting. I spend more time troubleshooting my 3 PCs than actually being productive with them. This comes at a time where my wife’s laptop had over 1700 privacy/security infections. It basically has been throwing up system errors every few seconds and started to crawl to a halt. The machine has 2 firewalls running and Norton Suite!
Then my main XP workstation started acting weird - I couldn’t launch some programs and Ctrl+Alt+Delete wouldn’t launch. I would have to hard reboot and the same thing would happen. Again - multiple firewalls and still finding privacy threats and Trojans within my system.
Another $30 later i have yet another Spyware program running on my machines. I am constantly scanning for malware, viruses, trojects, spyware, etc…and most of my 2GB of RAM go to these programs. I barely have enough RAM to run the programs I really need.
Anyway - vent over…for now. My next machine will be a Mac - no more PCs for me.
chris at Mar 20, 08 at 1:24 pm
“troubleshooting”?
For some strange reason my pc doesn’t even start. One of the new parts must be broken. =(
If you don’t have that many programs running on windows, you’ll be fine with a mac.
good luck
milchreis at Mar 20, 08 at 1:37 pm
That’s not strange at all - everyone who has a PC will begin to suffer from a gradual system-wide slow-down until it crawls and then begs to be put out of its misery. I used to love my PCs and swear by them - but over the last 10 years I am completely frustrated by how much time is spent scanning, quarantining, fixing, protecting, defragging, installing, uninstalling, patching, updating, lifting up and dropping, throwing, shaking, banging and yelling at them.
I know what kind of mac i want and it is just a mater of time.
chris at Mar 20, 08 at 2:16 pm
Oh and that’s not all - 3 years ago I bought a top-of-the-line Dell Inspiron 17″ notebook with all the bells and whistles. About 2 months ago a very annoying 1 pixel vertical line appeared through my display. I googled it and found that this is a very common problem.
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/04/09/10675.aspx
I called Dell only to be told my machine is out of warranty and that it would cost me a minimum of $500 to fix and that my money would be better spent on a new machine.
WOW. Dell admitting to faulty hardware and their product of having a shelf life of only 3 years or less. Amazing. Unnacceptable. That may be my last correspondance with Dell - even though I recommend their machines, I can’t get past this 1 pixel verticle line as I have to stare at it every damn day.
chris at Mar 20, 08 at 2:31 pm
I so love you for posting that cartoon!!!!!!!! Aside from the sticker shock, your life will just be so less stressful if you have a Mac. My boyfriend who has for a decade called my computer a “Crapple-tosh” just shocked me and ordered the Macbook Air !!!!!! (damn it, that’s newer than what I have - MacBook Pro) I guess my daily glee whilst working was just pissing him off. LOL. I’m sorry PC peeps, I am just trying to be funny….. by the way, you can make payments. That’s what American life is all about.
TM at Mar 20, 08 at 4:06 pm
Chris, didn’t you ever wonder why I was annoyingly positive? LOL
TM at Mar 20, 08 at 4:15 pm
Welcome to a much friendlier world tux!
ive never actually owned a PC (at least that ill admit to)
Z
MrZEe at Mar 20, 08 at 8:57 pm
aw, come-onnnnnnn, you know you want that shiny new “MUDBUBBLE PRO” (wow, love the interactivity you gave the pooch over at your portfolio site!!!! I feel some games coming along!!) I wouldn’t be surprised if you already went out and picked up a couple of those bad boys by now. (well, mine’s a girl) P.S. - I have found Apple (and GDY.com have THEE BEST customer service reps America has to offer.
TM at Mar 20, 08 at 11:32 pm
My mac could well be arriving tomorrow <3
Peter Woodward-Court at Mar 21, 08 at 5:02 am
Oh Peter…congrats! I’m envious
chris at Mar 21, 08 at 7:46 am
I got my Macbook Pro last July, and I absolutely love it, before that I used to only use PCs, but I got so fed up with them that I got a Mac, since I mostly use Adobe products and they all work on Mac there was no issues. Wacom also works great on it. Also, Flash player runs really well on Intel Core 2 Duo machines so there’s not much worry about that (It runs a bit slow on my gf’s G4 iBook). So total convert I guess. I have Boot Camp installed so I can still play the odd PC game if I want to.
Honestly though, I don’t regret buying it one bit and would highly recommend one to people who just want to enjoy using their computer and not have to waste time and energy on system maintenance.
Just a note, when you test a Flash movie it runs a bit slow from inside Flash for some reason, but it runs a lot smoother from the finder with the Flash Player.
Ranoka at Mar 21, 08 at 1:29 pm
I have a G5 quad, but the playback in flash is really quite slow. I know this is a common headache for flash users running macs, however things might be different with the intel macs.
Apart from that, everything else runs much better than it did on my PC. Basically, once you’ve had Mac, you’re never go back.
Paul at Mar 21, 08 at 1:35 pm
Completely agree, I can’t stand to use my girlfriend’s windows laptop as I’m used to using my G5 iMac. It’s about 4 years old now and it’s still running like the day I bought it, nice and fast
stephen at Mar 21, 08 at 1:39 pm
While the Mac has some clear advantages, their support is quite shoddy as well. It seems to be a larger trend of companies not backing their products. Apple’s default support plan is one year, and even within that year, it’s tough to get decent service. The phone support forces you to take the machine into an Apple store before they’ll receive it for warranty repairs. I was just lucky that I’d recently moved to an area with an Apple store. I’ll spare you all the minor details, but basically Apple fought tooth-and-nail to not fix something that was clearly malfunctioning and clearly under warranty. Then they tried to charge me for aspects of the warranty service and could not provide me with any details on what they had fixed. Do a quick keyword search if you want more examples of shoddy mac support, they’re all over the net.
I’d love to see the Adobe apps on an open-source platform. I’d switch in a heartbeat. There’s a great Linux laptop called the EE that costs a few hundred dollars, and the OLPC organization has put together a fantastic $100 machine for children around the world that ships without the bloated OS (which means it requires far less memory to run, and has fewer reasons to crash).
All that being said, if I had to buy a computer today, it would be a Mac. Though it would be because the frustrations that Chris has described above have happened to me more (so far) on a Windows machine than on a Mac, and not because I really want a Mac. And generally I work in an industry that’s skewed toward Macs. Really just a lesser of two evils at this point.
Also, with Parallels able to run Windows on the Mac, there’s no need for a separate Windows machine.
Justin_P at Mar 21, 08 at 7:41 pm
“Why would anyone buy a Windows machine” is the real question.
Alan at Mar 22, 08 at 1:47 am
sorry to sound rude here but this is fucking bollocks
wa wa wa windows sucks
mac rules
could we stop behaving like we were 5 YEARS OLD, please? just stop whining about operating systems and stop being so god damn ignorant (this goes to every operating system basher even though mac people prefer to whine about how crap windows is. get a life and do something PRODUCTIVE instead).
thank you very much.
MarkP0rter at Mar 22, 08 at 12:36 pm
MarkPOrter - easy on the language please - no need for it - and being “productive” is the issue here - I am not being ignorant or childish or without a life when I tell you at least 30% of my time throughout the course of the year is spent fixing, repairing, cleaning or reinstalling windows or programs across 3 windows machines. It has been this way for years and everyone else I know who uses PCs complains about the same issue. Last week I was over a friends house for the first time in years and they have a PC in their kitchen. My friend was asking me about what can be done to fix it. i asked what was wrong with it and he says that it has simply been slowly crawling to a halt for the past year and is basically unusable. Now I know this could be user error also - but not once has anyone with a Mac ever complained about the same issues. Sure macs are not perfect and I admit this conversation is a little biased - but there’s simply no need to start acting belligerent towards those who chose to share their own experiences here. If you run Windows and have a success story - let’s hear it - we’re all ears
This is just a conversation about people’s preferences of one platform over the other. I believe in freedom of speech and everyone’s opinion counts - even yours, but there’s no need to approach everyone with such a harsh and degrading point of view.
Chris at Mar 22, 08 at 12:48 pm
“show me a mac os that is 50 MB small, has a GUI and runs from a usb stick!”
that’s what I would translate mark’s words into and I must agree. It’s always the question about what you do with it, which hardware you have…
PS: yes, I know that the OS described above exists.
milchreis at Mar 22, 08 at 2:57 pm
My Windows success story is this: I bought a P4 1.5ghz PC in June 2002. I installed McAffee Internet Suite the day I bought it and never seemed to have any problems with security (although I’m equally sure that no computer, regardless of OS is truely safe). This year I bought a new PC, but only because Im greedy - my old PC still worked just fine and I never had to repair, maintain or recover data once in almost 6 years.
Also I should say that having multiple antivirus, spywares and/or firewalls generally does more harm than good - there is no extra benefit for using those precious resources and they can confuse each other.
I know you’ve made your mind up already, but just thought I’d post this up - PCs aren’t all bad.
: )
mikie at Mar 22, 08 at 4:04 pm
Point taken mikie - and I agree with you - I used to praise my PCs also, for years and the main reason I am PC based is because Flash always ran 10x better on them compared to the Mac - but lately my 3 XP machines have all been suffering from a laundry list of issues. Every week it is something else - the last 4 days my laptop suddenly can no longer print because i get an error that the Print Spooler is not starting. I have googled it and fixed the problem from the info I have found - but then suddenly the problem pops up again. At times my network sharing folders are disconnected for no reason - I reboot the modem, wireless hub and all machines connected and it still won’t work after working flawlessly for a year. After 3 hours of researching, troubleshooting and restarting various kinds of hardware, I then run scans only to find a trojan file somewhere on my system that my 2 anti-virus programs and anti-trojan programs let slip through the cracks. I’m just frustrated because I need my machines up and running 24/7 without the need to spend 1-2 days out of every week trying to solve technical IT issues. I know this can be a heated topic when arguing about which is the better platform and I have always regarded platforms as the old Ford vs Chevy debate - they are both tools that get you from point A to point B - but for me, after 10 years of using PCs, it’s time for a Mac - if not for the reason to be cross-platform as well. I probably will always have PC in my arsenal, I’m just guilty of using my own website and you as my captive audience to vent some frustrations.
I do apologize to MarkPorter if I reacted harshly - I just don’t want this conversation to become a personal attack between each other’s character.
chris at Mar 22, 08 at 5:43 pm
The big question I have is, if you buy an intel mac and run windows on it. Will you have the same problems and will a pc virus effect the mac side?
Paul at Mar 22, 08 at 6:19 pm
Hey Paul, if you use Boot Camp then Windows is on a separate partition to OS X and is completely separate and won’t affect OS X in any way what so ever, it’s like a separate computer. So if you got a virus on Windows or Windows stopped loading up properly, as long as it’s not a hardware fault then it won’t affect the OS X partition at all. Since you’re booting into Windows it will run at 100% since you aren’t running Mac OS. But running Windows on a Mac won’t make it more secure, you are just as likely to get infected if you were using Windows on any other hardware.
I’m not to sure how software like Parallels works since I haven’t used it, but it boots into Windows while you’re in Mac and sort of emulates Windows so you can use Mac and Windows at the same time, Windows doesn’t run at 100% speed this way since your computer is running Mac OS at the same time and emulating it. (I’m not sure emulating is the right word, so I’ll probably be corrected by someone)
Ranoka at Mar 23, 08 at 7:29 am
don’t blame the system.
blame the user.
arek at Mar 23, 08 at 11:00 am
Hey Chris. Not sure if this was made with a PC too, but your MSN sent me an automated virus message today.
Tried to get me to sign into a website and “find out” who is blocking me on MSN. Sounds familiar? Not sure how you could get rid of it… What’s dangerous is it could be checking what kinds of passwords you write down on sites. Be careful…
A lot of friends on PC have been sending me these types of auto-messages.
Fakepilot at Mar 23, 08 at 12:18 pm
Fakepilot - I am a victim of this as well - not sure how it got sent through me but i always avoid MSN messages from someone i don’t know. Again, perfect example of PC vulnerablity - all my ant-virus/trojan software didn’t pick it up. Oh well. Now I am sure something has infected my system once again after 2 days of cleaning it out from last week’s invasions.
chris at Mar 23, 08 at 2:15 pm
Hi Chris,
Well, PCs (windows machines) are the dominant anyway. From your description, your pcs’ problem seem to be caused by the many security programs you have in your pc. My machine run flawlessly with winXP, one antivirus, one antimalware period.
If you used to work on (windows machines), believe me, I bet you WILL abandon mac and come back our world.
Mustafa at Mar 23, 08 at 2:46 pm
Fakepilot - i just ran a scan using Housecall and it found an unknown object named “MS08-007″ - I googled it and found this:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-007.mspx
Yet another critical vulnerability and this time the attacker has complete control of my system and the ability to view, install, run and delete programs as well as create new user accounts with admin rights - this kind of stuff makes it REALLY hard to stick with PCs as my main production platform
Mustafa - thanks for your input - I really don;t have that many programs running - I have tried almost all of them at one time or another. My latest firewall is from Sygate and it’s an older version that doesn’t come with every bell and whistle like the bloated Norton Firewalls do. I find many security programs are overwhelming my system with various types of applications all trying to protect every aspect of my machine - from IM to email to browser and beyond. The result is, these security apps tend to take up so many system resources I can’t run any of my productivity programs too long before having to restart 3 times a day.
There was a while where both of my machines ran flawlessly - with the occasional hiccup here and there But the past 2-3 months it has literally been non-stop troubleshooting and scanning of all my machines. I’m sure i will always have a PC running for testing, but as far as my dedicated platform, I am emotionally drained.
chris at Mar 23, 08 at 5:47 pm
Macs are the way to go! I’ve literally NEVER had any problems with my iMac.
Stephen Levinson at Mar 23, 08 at 6:17 pm
I agree with Chris. I always thought Flash ran slightly better on a PC. Though I’ve been working exclusively on a new Mac with CS3 for months now, and have not been bothered. Though CS3 still has some crash bugs.
Parallels does mount a separate hard disk. It just does it “live” while you’re in the Mac OS, so you don’t have to reboot and you can switch between the two instantly.
I’m running Windows through Parallels on a Mac Pro with 768 MB of RAM allotted to Windows (XP) and it runs as fast or faster than any Windows machine I’ve had. It should be noted that the computer is a quad-core with 4 MB of RAM, so it’s no slouch.
Since I’m only running Windows when I need it, it presents a much smaller security hole than running a Windows machine.
Justin_P at Mar 24, 08 at 11:19 am
I’m running an HP and absolutly love it. Wish I could say the same for their printers… I bought 1, exchanged it because it was having some print cartrige error, they gave me a new one, that one kept telling me that its rear acess door was open, exchanged that one, so I’m now on the 3rd printer -count ‘em- 3 of the same model printer before I could find one that worked… It’s a “HP Officejet Pro L7600 series”. Psh. Now this one isn’t letting me print wirelessly. But I do love my laptop!
As for Norton… I won’t touch Norton with a 20 ft. stick. My last computer came with Norton installed on it (same as this one, but I was quick to take it off), then one day some message came up on my computer screen and then the computer crashed very quickly after that. Norton is one of the most popular virus softwares out there, so most viruses are written for Norton. Yuck.
divinglizard at Mar 24, 08 at 1:17 pm
Or at least I should say, I’VE heard that most viruses are written for Norton.
divinglizard at Mar 24, 08 at 1:19 pm
What Mac are you going to buy? Hopefully this question hasn’t been already asked.
Alex W at Mar 24, 08 at 2:36 pm
Love my PC. Don’t know why people have so many problems. I haven’t seen a blue screen of death since 2000. Never had a virus. I like the updatability and the amount of software for it.
I was close to getting a Mac, since the VMWare fusion would allow me to run some of my essential windows apps not available for OSX, then the PC laptop industry smartened up and actually started creating some pretty laptops. Still not as pretty as Mac Book Pro, but I’ve been on a small form laptop for years similar to AIR, but half-the price (and half the beauty), but all the functionality (or more).
The only thing I really hate is when the new machines come, the hard drives need to be formated and the OS reinstalled because of all the crap software the manufacturers install.
Oh, and the other thing I’m jealous of OSX user is Quicksilver. I’ve tried all the pseudo-windows equivalent and yet to find something as nice.
todd at Mar 24, 08 at 2:40 pm
divinglizard: yeah I have heard great things about HP machines from an IT friend.
Alex W: I am looking at an 8 core Mac Pro.
todd: I went a long time without problems and I think my luck has simply run out all at once. First it was the verticl pixel through my display after only 3 years, then all the network connectivity problems, then i had the biggest problem with sound drivers on my main workstation, oh the list goes on and on. I agree there’s tons more software for PCs and I can’t really function without one - having a Mac makes me cross-platform which ain’t all bad.
I admit I have been pretty hard on the PC world the past few days - and I admit to using my own site as a soapbox to blow off some steam - but it is good to hear what everyone has to say about this issue.
chris at Mar 24, 08 at 2:49 pm
I’ve never had problems as severe as you are having — and the only protection I used was ZoneAlarm firewall and SpyBot S&D. I’m also pretty suspicious and don’t fall for the spyware scams out there (though I do have some very intelligent friends that have).
Macafee and Norton slow down your system in general. Uninstall them, use Spybot or AdAware to check for Spyware periodically, and only install a Virus Protection program if believe you have a virus (ZoneAlarm will tell you when any spyware/virus attempts to connect to the internet).
Also, go out and buy DiskKeeper — defrag software. Helps me a lot (I still have some PCs as well).
That said, I love my Mac Book Pro, though I am probably going to continue to use the Windows partition to do all my Flash Dev work — lack of a good AS3 Editor on OS X. I would worry about timing issues as far as animation goes — not sure about the latest player, but animations generally seemed slower on OS X. I have another license for CS3 for OS X through work, so I’m trying to see whether that’ll work out for me. Otherwise I have my own on the Bootcamp partition.
One infuriating thing: Due to the way Adobe has it’s accounting set up, while you can have CS3 on two computers (so you can have one on say, your laptop and one on your dektop), they have to be the same OS. You have to go through some hoops to switch from a Windows to a OS X license, and while that’s easy in theory they have managed to make it an insane chore for some people.
I just wish Apple would come out with a desktop in-between the Imac and the Mac Pro. 8 cores is overkill unless you are doing some pretty heavy video editing or tons of floating-point calculations (which I am doing, but the dual core is working out for me).
Glenn at Mar 24, 08 at 6:07 pm
I have used a lot of MACS and I have FAILURE stories about those. THE OS used to really annoy the hell out of me and every day I would find something new about MACS that just makes lifes a pain in the…back. Let’s just say the OS is VERY user friendly: You don’t even have to tell the OS to close a program for you because it will do so for yourself- even without asking and even if you hadn’t saved yet. My programs on XP don’t crash. I can’t remember when an Adobe program crashed for me on XP and I’ve used many PCs running XP. I’ve also used A LOT of Macs running OSX and all Adobe prodcuts would crash on me all the time. In fact even the whole Mac would crash on me. That never happened to me on XP. In fact I first wanted to write a book why I think XP is nicer than OSX. there are just way too many things that are terrible about Macs but HEY I am not like the mac stereotype who want to force their believes onto anybody. CREATIVE people seem to use MACS- THINK DIFFERENT. Hey creative people. how about you actually think different and use WINDOWS but hey whatever you prefer. Overall the winner should be linux because it doesn’t crash but I am not nerd or geek enough to operate Linux. Also there are way too many distributions so I don’t even know what Linux version to pick. So well the bottom line is: I thought apple would be better than windows. I’ve used many apple machines and it was a terrible experience and slowed me down like hell. The navigation is so fast on XP. VISTA is a horrid nightmare. If you like Apple- fine. IF you like Windows- fine. Whatever makes you happy but BOY there are so many apple fan boys. Microsoft is just a company and most people don’t like it while Apple is like a RELIGION and people whoreship Steve Jobs. thats just wrong.
MarkP0rter at Mar 25, 08 at 5:10 am
Hi MarkPOrter - how long ago and what version of Mac were you running then? I’m just curious as the main reason I have been PC is because of what you said - programs like Flash especially, run so much faster on PC - I have seen this first hand so often.
I have avoided Vista because of the horror stories I encounter all the time and I’m confused by all the different versions of the same OS. Plus, XP has really worked well overall. I just think lately I have hit a bad luck streak - so far the past 3 days I have been issue-free and back to normal. I’m actually getting work done again
-chris
chris at Mar 25, 08 at 11:17 am
“programs like Flash especially, run so much faster on PC” yeh so why use a mac if its faster on pc?
ive used macs at 7 different companies from 2004-2006 (all running OSX and some machines were very fast and new and overall all machines were good enough to handle photoshop/illustrator/in design) and they all crashed a lot and closed programs by themselves and other awful stuff. there are also tiny details i just hate but thats a matter of taste i also cant argue about anymore since i dont sit infront of a mac every day (thank god). its just stuff like typing in an address of your folder and going directly to that folder. i know what my folders are called while on a mac i have to click and click and click until im finally inside my folder- how slow. i also just LOVE my taskbar and the fact i see all FOLDERS and programs in there. i will have at least 10 things in my taskbar at once while if i have 10 different folders in the dock i wont be EASILY able to tell which folder is what so i have to F11 (or whatever key it is again) to bring them all on my screen and find the right one of them all- bring it up and disappearing again and blah. its all just so much faster on pc. i know the name of my folder- i know its place in the taskbar. one click and i am done. also i just hate how flashy OSX is. it feels like operating an OS coded in action script with all those motion tweens and other animations. i already hate the VERY FEW animations XP has like the animation you get when you pop up a window. im glad you can disable that. i dont think you can disable ALL SPIFFY animations in OSX at least i was in the systems settings and turend everything off you could but still you would get shiny animaitons. talking about shiy animations: Microsft REALLY tried to rip off Apple with their VISTA. its so TERRIBLY SHINY and you get all those horrid animations. I just want to use a computer/a tool and I rather make my own animations so Apple’s animations are very disturbing and annoying but at least kind of stylish and not horrid looking while Window’s animations are lame rip offs of the stuff Apple does which fail to look good. We have one apple at the company where I work for now and I’ve already heard some bad things about it but I don’t know. No computer is perfect so there we go. Apple certainly creates some GOOD programs when you look at Final Cut and Motion and all their programs. Also Apple/Windows hate never helps you at all. Many big tv stations use apple computers because of final cut so one day I will have to use a Mac OS again so either I hope things will have changed by then and everything will be “spiffy” or I just learn to live with the things that annoy me and ignore those. One thing that’s BRILLIANT about OSX and I love it is the feature to tag files- windows seriously needs that. There is some program for windows which lets you tag your files (I love it) but I’ve been told it slows down (didn’t notice that myself at all) things. Oh what also always annoyed my on OSX is cycling through folders. Like say you have a file called Beards and other files that start with B so Win you press B until you find the Beards file while on OSX you will only get the first file that starts with B (Banana) but it will never cycle through all the other B files like Win does. Now any Mac person might suggest I just search for the file (great if I don’t remember the exact name) also a person might suggest I just sort everything by name and then I can go through all the b files but I rather sort my files by date. Its just this really tiny and silly thing but it makes life a little bit more complicated and then OSX is full of all those little things and combined I’m just faster on XP. ALSO it bugs me I can never get program windows to be 100% fullscreen. You always get to see a tiny bit of your wallpaper. I’m sorry but such things just distract me like hell.
MarkP0rter at Mar 25, 08 at 5:38 pm
That’s reminded me… The place where I work has PCs mainly (for the photographers) and the 2 graphic designers use macs (for posters, leaflets and such like). Until this year.
It was decided that because the macs have become so unstable (within 2.5 years of purchase) and basically arent really network friendly, at least on our internal network, that they will be replaced with PCs this year. The mac operators are fuming mad because they love ‘em regardless of the faults - that’s both a good and a bad thing, and niether.
mikie9191 at Mar 26, 08 at 9:41 am
I’ve been building my own PC’s for 6 years now. I have to say, thats the only way to do it. When buying a retail PC, it comes standard with tons of crap you don’t need that bloat the system from the get-go. Chris, you should definitely not be running all those firewalls, you should only have one firewall, and the default Windows firewall is perfectly capable, and non intrusive. You should only need one anti-virus program running at all times. You do not need an anit-spyware program running at all times, however, you should have a free one like Ewido and just do a scan every week or two. What you should do is go here http://forums.g4tv.com/forum.jspa?forumID=64 sign up, and post the problems you’re having, they will more than likely have you run a hijack this log, and will totally clean you up. Very smart people there. Now, as for Mac vs. PC, which is a very touchy subject. I’ve worked on PCs all my life. Not until recently did I start to use Mac and PC side by side. So, for about 2 years now I’ve run both side by side every day (excluding weekends). There is a major difference in the two. All Adobe products just scream running on a PC, no problems, and very smooth. That can’t be said for the Mac side until recently. Up until CS3, Flash was incredibly slow, quit unexpectedly quiet often, and overall performance was lacking. Now that CS3 has been released, there are many improvements in that aspect. The IDE is much more responsive aside from the debugger failing to launch often times. There is a major difference though in the performance of Flash Player on the PC vs. Mac. The Mac runs much much slower. I always know that if my app is running smooth on the Mac, it’s gonna be incredible on the PC. Above, there are to many comparisons to laptops vs. desktops and those comparisons don’t make sense at all. You can’t expect a laptop to ever match the performance of a desktop. Other than all that, Macs are nice don’t get me wrong, but they have equal amount of problems that a PC does. Not to mention a hefty price tag. You can build a screaming PC for $1500, and I mean top of the line that would out perform a Mac any day. Do you want to do that though? A nice new shiny Mac does sound like the solution to your problems, but it really isn’t. Anyway, just my 2 nickels.
dzedward at Mar 26, 08 at 9:47 am
Wow - this IS a touchy subject - this entry has way more comments than any other entry ever. Between MarkPOrter, mikie and dzedward, I could be swayed in my platform decision. dzedward, I like the idea of building my own machine. I am pretty familiar with how they work and I have swapped out cards and hard drives enough times to feel pretty comfortable building my own. That sounds like a definite possibility.
Thanks to all for your opinions on this subject.
chris at Mar 26, 08 at 10:44 am
Update: running just the windows firewall (thanks dzedward) and uninstalled everything I do not need. Cleaning out the registry and doing other general maintenance. I also disabled themes to get the most out of my RAM - I don’t mind the older “classic” windows look at all - no frills - clean and simple. I am turning off all of the device drivers I do not need at startup (my laptop had close to 80!) - especially the Maxtor auto-sync programs for my external USB drives. I prefer to just plug them in when i need them and drag files over manually - I don’t need bloated software automating this for me - sure my mom may prefer pop up menus to guide her along the way - but I’d rather avoid these pesky apps running in the background and back-up when I want to backup.
Everything seems to be running smoothly again and as for the annoying pixel line through my display - i found a dell web page with contact information that may end up resulting in Dell sending me a replacement display (fingers crossed - I’ll believe that when I see it).
I may put off getting the mac and try focusing my pennies on a Cintiq.
Thanks all.
chris at Mar 27, 08 at 9:57 am
I have a Ti powerbook (for some personal use) and xp notebook, plus all we use at work are PCs. I have to agree that both platforms have issues but the one issue that has not been shared is malware vulnerability. But I don’t know how much this is true with the new versions of OS X, I stopped upgrading my machine at Panther. On the PC side, one of my friends always recommends to make sure that all the drivers are up to date. On the other hand, I have found that many times the problems that I encounter are related to microsoft xp upgrades. So as a result, my first course of action is typically a system restore and it usually fixes the problem. There have been times when I’m working on friends machines that have been infected, that the only course of action is to back up and start fresh. Then there have been the few times that it’s best to take the HDD out, get a new HDD and then copy over just what is needed. I agree with the multiple firewall comments, I have also found them to be conflicting with each other more than helping. Not sure what your network is like but you might benefit from a firewall like the ones that are made by watchguard or other manufacturers. And yeah, flash does run slow on my mac vs pc
MikeM at Mar 27, 08 at 10:42 am
@ Chris: changing to the classic theme was always the first thing to do for me after installing the OS
milchreis at Mar 27, 08 at 2:47 pm
Chris, I’ve been on the pc side of things my whole life. I just bought a mac a month ago. I couldn’t be happier. I switched for all the reasons you’ve shared. I too lost about 30% of my time to my pc. It was terrible. Then I made the switch to Vista, which was an even bigger mistake. After two brand new Vista laptops (HP & Toshiba) both of which had some terrible problems, I gave up. I couldn’t even print, for Pete’s sake. Took me three hours one day to try to print to a shared printer and I never got it working.
I couldn’t be happier. Did I say that already? I used to get so annoyed with the Mac guys who whined about how amazing their computer was. I’m afraid to admit I’m one of them now. And I’ve only had it a month. Haven’t had a single problem. Each day I find something new on this thing that makes me happier and happier. Don’t change your mind now. Switch. You won’t regret it. After all, you can still run XP using Boot Camp.
That’s what I’m going to do tomorrow. Install XP. Though to be honest, I’m less and less sure I want to. There was one app I used on Windows that wasn’t available on the Mac and they released a beta version of it for MacOSX last week.
Switch, man. Switch.
Jake Lyman at Mar 27, 08 at 3:38 pm
Oh, yeah. Did I mention that it connected to my network printer out of the box? And my network, both at work and home? And the apps built into it! Unbelievable. You should check out some of the videos I’ve made for my classroom kids. Silly homework announcements, but they love it!
Productivity since I made the purchase has been 100%.
I just installed CS3 on it yesterday so I can’t really talk yet about how all those apps run on it. A little slow, I imagine, since I’ve only got a gig of RAM. I’ll upgrade it soon.
Jake Lyman at Mar 27, 08 at 3:45 pm
No problem chris, I really recommend posting on that forum I gave a link to, they will thoroughly clean your system, like starting fresh. I don’t see how people have so many problems, I have a home built machine running the standard windows firewall, a standard anti-virus with no bells and whistles, and have not once had a problem with my machine. I run a server off it as well so it’s very important to me that it stays in good health. Just by being safe when surfin the internet, you can really decrease your vulnerability. I also recommend this http://www.siteadvisor.com/download/ffmedia.html?cid=21638&gclid=CKbGyIuUrpICFSTLiQod_hgfNg as a nice little addition for firefox, so when you do a google search, it’ll tell you what sites are good and what are bad. Just using safe practices you shouldn’t ever worry about virus and maybe the minimal amount of spyware.
@ Jake: That’s just it, you’ve only been using your Mac for a month.
dzedward at Mar 27, 08 at 3:47 pm
@dzedward: You’re right, of course. Just sharing my experience to date. We’ll see if I’m crowing this much a year from now. Time will tell. I do, however, have a number of friends in the web developer field who made the switch years ago. It is very telling to hear them say things like, “The ‘aha’ moment for me was when I looked back after three years of using a Mac and realized I’d lost only an hour of productivity during those years.” I don’t think I’ve met anyone using a windows box who can say the same.
Man, this is such a hot issue. What am I doing weighing in on this!?!?!?
Jake Lyman at Mar 27, 08 at 3:54 pm
Chris, my only concern here is that you keep working and enjoying your work!! Keep belting them out!! That makes SO MUCH me happier than touting about my 20 years of Mac.
TM at Mar 27, 08 at 9:33 pm
Having read this entire page the solution is clear to me now - you will need a mac for your (beautiful) left hand, and a PC for your (fast) right hand.
mikie9191 at Mar 28, 08 at 9:40 am
Now there you go! Diplomacy, I like it.
TM at Mar 28, 08 at 10:14 am
“Show me your operating system and I will tell you who you are.”
Eh…
I have a Mac, and I have to trouble shoot ONCE EVERY 500 CENTURIES. It is unbelievable! I should definitely swap to Windows…
Smidget at Mar 28, 08 at 9:50 pm
PCs VS Macs hahaha this is funny. Hey Chris, I bought your book, I’ve been using flash for a couple years now, and think your book is awesome! Can’t wait for the second edition, I will definitely buy it. As for Pc vs. Mac, to me, like you said, they are just tools. Those people that say macs are not problematic are WRONG! I have a PC at home, unfortunately running Vista, I prefer XP, my older computer was awesome with XP, and am using a Mac at work, and I’ve had some issues with flash, and the way it handles program windows, minimizing and bringing to the front and stuff. I hope you resolve your issues though.
Ramiro Olmos at Apr 11, 08 at 12:25 am
Thanks Ramiro, I think it’s time to update this entry by saying i am about to pull the trigger on building my own PC. I have given this a lot of thought and since all my software is PC, and Flash simply runs faster on PC and since my main issue with PCs is all the bloated unwanted software that comes with them - building my own will give me exactly what I need. Thanks to Dzedward (www.flashgods.org) I am using http://www.newegg.com to build a screaming PC for almost 1/2 of what I would pay for a machine from a major manufacturer.
I’d still love a Mac - but the price tag is simply way to steep for me right now - every time I price out what I need, it’s well over $4500 not including the software I’ll need to get for it.
chris at Apr 11, 08 at 12:34 am
I recently switched from windows to linux. I was doing the dual boot thing for about 1 week and decided to zap xp totally. I freaking love it. I build my own pcs and use linux. I just wish all the big computer manufacturers didn’t include a windows license agreement.
pcdoctor at Apr 11, 08 at 6:26 pm
Hey Chris
I’m going to be building my own new pc sometime in the next week or so as well and I was wondering what specs you are going to be going with for yours?
Thanks
James at Apr 15, 08 at 12:44 am
James - sure thing - go here:
http://www.keyframer.com/custom-pc.html
The processor is currently not in stock at newegg but I am checking Microcenter and other places. I haven’t ordered the parts yet but about to pull the trigger any day now.
chris at Apr 15, 08 at 1:04 am
I should also add - I have 2 other internal Seagate drives I will be adding - one is 500GB the other is 750GB
chris at Apr 15, 08 at 1:13 am
Looks like a little powerhouse Chris…
Just one thing - I’m sure I read somewhere that XP only supports up to 3gb Ram(?) If anyone can confirm or deny this for me I would be really happy ‘cos I was thinkin’ about adding some more. You can’t have TOO much, right?
Mikie9191 at Apr 15, 08 at 3:05 am
Mikie9191, i believe you are correct - Dzedward informed me of the 3GB limit with XP - the 4GB of RAM costs $99 and I couldn’t find a 2GB stick and a 1GB stick that matched - besides, I would probably only save about $10? Unless of course having 1GB too much will cause problems - that I do not know. I may research this more.
chris at Apr 15, 08 at 6:52 am
I googled the 3GB RAM limit and found a wealth of info that seems very consistent in that a 32-bit OS such as XP can only support 3GB RAM - 64-bit can support a whole lot more. So perhaps I will change my mind and specifically install 3GB and not 4GB.
chris at Apr 15, 08 at 7:01 am
Hey chris, the best way around this, and to maximize performance, is to get 2-1gig sticks and 2-512sticks. You want to take advantage of the dual channel support, so dont want 3-1gig and leave 1 slot open. All I know is you’re going to be totally happy with you new comp. The overall performance of a home built vs manufacturer is just night and day.
dzedward at Apr 15, 08 at 12:28 pm
Thanks again Dzedward - I updated my list with new RAM components. I read all about Latency as well - but overall learned to simply go with a reputable company (in the case Kingston) and make sure all memory sticks match.
http://www.keyframer.com/custom-pc.html
chris at Apr 15, 08 at 11:24 pm
Thanks also Dzedward… Really helpful.
I now have 2×512 sticks on my weekend shopping list.
mikie9191 at Apr 16, 08 at 4:52 am
Hey Chris,
I forgot to mention, I used the Drag tutorial in your book to create a sticker like animation on my homepage. The drag was the foundation of my idea, and I added to it, and successfully got a sticker that peels off and on, and you can drag it anywhere. Its’ really cool to be able to tell you this, and know you will read it. Anyhow keep up the good work man, and wish you luck on building your computer so you can keep rocking out some cool flash work.
Ramiro Olmos at Apr 16, 08 at 12:43 pm
Ramiro Olmos, thanks for letting me know! Glad the tutorial helped
So the first component arrived today - the Thermaltake Armor Case and it is HUGE! It’s also mostly metal and heavy! Exactly what I always thought a computer case should look and feel like. It came with 4 fans, one of which is 120mm in size! Anyway, I already feel like I made the best possible decision thanks to everyone’s comments here - especially dzedward! I should have been more specific in the title of this post - “I will never buy another PRE-BUILT windows machine again!”
I am going to document the buildup with photos and writing - perhaps it will be a chapter in a future book someday
-chris
chris at Apr 18, 08 at 8:15 pm
Chris - and others.
I have worked in the IT industry for 18 years. I have managed 10’s of thousands of PC’s. Personally, I have several servers and 5 PC’s at home. All XP SP2. Our organization runs McAfee and Adware, but I use Grisoft AVG at home and a LinkSys firewall/router. I run 4 Adobe CS3 apps at home and in the 4 years that I have had Comcast broadband and 5 machines and 2 servers up 7/24 - I have had 1 virus infected file that tried to sneak through and AVG caught it. I have no downtime - other than a 3rd party video card that went bad in one machine.
Chris, I don’t know how your home office is configured, but if you just have a hub that is riding a hot unprotected internet connection, then you are totally exposed and that would explain why your PC’s are getting infected. I would suggest getting a router with a firewall and then rebuilding your boxes clean and then before installing anything - go to Grisoft and install the free version of AVG. You can evaluate it and then purchase it if you like it. AVG integrates with Windows perfectly and it also sniffs all inbound email ( which is where I suspect that the majority of your virus issues are originating. ).
I know its a lot of work to start over clean, but once a Windows box’s registry is compromised, its almost impossible to repair and performance does degrade over time.
Use only one Anti-virus app on your PC and off-load the fire-walling to your router and use NAT ( Network Address Translation ). Its built into firewall capable routers.
I once tested an old laptop and for fun and I connected it to the hot side of the firewall ( unprotected internet ) and it was infected in 5 minutes. Internet bots were hitting it and port scanning looking for vulnerabilities as soon as it was plugged in. Thats why hardware fire-walling is critical - Not software. While software can provide a 2nd level - its what is stealing your PC’s performance because its sniffing ALL traffic that your PC sees on the wire. I would only install a software firewall on a laptop that will be connecting to public or unknown networks.
- Phil
ThePhoenix at Apr 22, 08 at 4:57 pm
… One additional note. I was at a conference last month and asked if Adobe was planning on porting their apps over to Linux - and at this time Adobe has NO plans to make any of their major product lines available on Linux. Having said that - there may be some virtualization products that may allow Windows runtime “bottles” that will run Windows based apps on a Linux box.
And - for all you XP folks that can’t stand Vista ( count me in on that one ;() ) you can still get XP licenses from major vendors - like HP and Dell till the end of 08. After that MS is pulling all sales of XP to the public and will only commit to supporting XP till sometime in 09. That date has yet to be formally announced.
For XP - the end is near. About 18 months away unless the MS Mothership has a change of heart. At the conference I was at - it was clear amongst IT managers that Vista is a total loss and no one that I spoke to was looking at it seriously, which may pressure MS to extend support into 2010. We’ll see. There was also rumor that Vista will be essentially scrapped and that the internal MS focus will be on the next gen of Windows ( Windows 7 )
Chris - you are hooked into Adobe - do you know of any plans to port products like Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, etc.. to a Linux platform?
- Phil
ThePhoenix at Apr 22, 08 at 5:49 pm
@ThePhoenix,
wow thanks for your insight - my router is from Verizon (FIOS) - model is from Actiontec and is WEP enabled. As to it’s firewall capabilities, I am not 100% - need to look kinto that next.
I just finished building my new super computer and all-in-all it was a pretty smooth process. It’s running a fresh copy of XP, 3GB RAM, and the CPU is running chilly at 17C and the overall system is at 32C (not under load at system idle) - that is quite amazing! This thing has 5 fans (counting the video card fan). The CPU fan itself is a monster!
I have not installed any programs yet - just been updating the BIOS and various drivers. I am amazed at the quality of each of the components! Comparing them side-by-side with my old Dell is laughable - the Dell simply looks small and underpowered - I will take some photos soon because this thing is as beautiful as CPUs get (imo). The GeForce 8800 video card alone is the size of my foot!
Thanks again to all for your advice
Happy as a clam!
chris at Apr 23, 08 at 10:04 am
I’m really excited for you, the performance difference is gonna blow you away.
dzedward at Apr 23, 08 at 4:46 pm
Chris - your system sounds like a real screamer. To protect it, get a router with a firewall. Talk to Verizon and they may suggest a few models that work best with their system. WEP is just an encryption schema to prevent other wireless devices from attaching to your personal network. Its not related to virus or other types of port scanner attacks looking for vulnerabilites. If you really want to lock down your network, I would trash the wireless stuff and go to CAT5 or 6 ethernet. Considering your vast collections of creative capitiol - it makes sense to protect it. Routers are anywhere from 80 to 200 bucks for home useage. You can get into the $500+ cost range for more sophisticated stuff, but its not really necessary.
Best of luck with the new system. Look into AVG anti-virus as well. The base product for 40 bucks provides virus protection and adware/spyware capabilities too.
- Phil
ThePhoenix at Apr 24, 08 at 12:11 am
@ThePhoenix,
I have detirmined my Verizon FIOS router (ActionTec) has a firewall - I log in using an IP address and have 3 firewall control settings (Low, Med, High). It is set to “Medium”:
Inbound Policy: REJECT
Outbound Policy: ACCEPT.
So I have to assume I am in pretty good shape…?
-c
chris at Apr 24, 08 at 9:40 am
I ran some traffic tests using hackerwatch.org and all ports were reported as invisible to the outside world. Feeling good about my web securty overall.
Thanks again.
chris at Apr 24, 08 at 9:52 am
Cool - sounds like you are ready to rock. Have you upgraded your fuse panel in your house to run your screamer? Sounds like one killer machine. Now I want to build one… See what you started.
Be well.
Phil
ThePhoenix at Apr 24, 08 at 2:14 pm
Yeah - the house panel was upgraded about 3 years ago from 110 to 220 - i will take some solid photos of the case and components soon and post them - i just installed the Adobe Master Collection and running Flash all afternoon. The most noticeable difference is that this machine shuts down and starts up lightning fast - reboots within 45 seconds and Photoshop/Flash launch within 5 seconds. i am not used to this! My previous desktop took 18 minutes to startup :p (no joke).
chris at Apr 24, 08 at 2:33 pm
lol - You have upgraded from a Ford Escort to a Ferrari. You may want to get seatbelts when you are working :).
I am watching your Lip Sync tutorial from your Adobe Breeze sessions. If you might recall, (or not … lol ) I sent you an email a while ago right after I bought your Flash CS3 cheats. It was about the nested mouths in Graphic Symbols. Its a sweet technique. The one thing that I like to do is to use filters on my chars and you cant do that with graphic symbols. So my chars are a mix of graphics and movie clips. I just revisited this site over the last week or so and you have added a lot of content. Very helpful by the way. Very cool stuff. I was just kidding about the fuse panel - but I’m glad to hear you are amp’ed up… Phil
ThePhoenix at Apr 24, 08 at 2:55 pm
That’s funny
DennisBB at Apr 29, 08 at 7:37 am