Long ago I began removing IE from my computer using both freeware and pay software. The best I've seen so far is a program called XPLite/2000Lite. This program allows you to remove IE, Outlook, Messenger, the Windows Protection System and a long list of Micro$oft crap that comes installed.
http://www.litepc.com/
I'm not sure what your price range is, but one method I've had success with is a Promise SATA add-in card and removable hard drive enclosures. SATA is hot-swappable and combine that with a cheap hard drive enclosure ($10-$30+) with any SATA hard drive of your choice and you have a relatively cheap solution.
Replace your Real and Quicktime Codecs.
on
MPlayer 1.0Pre1 Is Here
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you go to:
http://www.freecodecs.com/
you'll find a few programs called Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative. It has everything you need to replace your Real and Quicktime codecs plus it comes with a fairly recent version of Media Player Classic.
I tried it out and found that it worked and seeked better than RealPlayer.
While Linux and Macs don't get the majority of viruses, you also have to look at a few things objectively. For one, the majority of consumer computer users are PC users. PCs are more economical and have a larger selection of software and hardware available to the average consumer at pretty much every department and electronics store. Now look to your various flavors of OSes. Even though Linux is gaining popularity, it's still not the type of thing you'd see grandma using. With the exception of a few obscure types of OSes, that leaves Windows with the majority of the market share.
Now imagine your average consumer. They want a cheap computer that will do everything they want using an OS that isn't "too hard" for them to learn. People are inherently lazy. Once they can get their e-mail, surf the web, scan and print, play a few games and change their wallpaper do you think they really care about security until they get a virus?
Don't get me wrong, I don't support MS by any means. If anything they are quite guilty of being a lazy organization with sloppy programmers that enjoys stepping all over it's consumers. They don't innovate anymore as much as they regurgitate. That said, they didn't make the virus.
Personally, I took the single greatest and most efficient step to reducing the threat of viruses... I removed IE & Outlook. After that I installed Mozilla and a simple virus scanner with a shell extention that displays "Scans for Viruses" in a menu when I right-click. The process is basicly like this, I scan a file before I run it and I delete any e-mail from anyone I don't know. Somehow I don't see this catching on with your average consumer.
Anyway, getting back to the point, add all this up and imagine you want to the proud parent of a virus. You want to cause as much havoc and inflict as much damage as possible. So what OS would you go looking for vulnerabilities in?
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Long ago I began removing IE from my computer using both freeware and pay software. The best I've seen so far is a program called XPLite/2000Lite. This program allows you to remove IE, Outlook, Messenger, the Windows Protection System and a long list of Micro$oft crap that comes installed. http://www.litepc.com/
Indeed. Moving from "fatal exception" to "kernel panic."
I'm not sure what your price range is, but one method I've had success with is a Promise SATA add-in card and removable hard drive enclosures. SATA is hot-swappable and combine that with a cheap hard drive enclosure ($10-$30+) with any SATA hard drive of your choice and you have a relatively cheap solution.
If you go to:
http://www.freecodecs.com/
you'll find a few programs called Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative. It has everything you need to replace your Real and Quicktime codecs plus it comes with a fairly recent version of Media Player Classic.
I tried it out and found that it worked and seeked better than RealPlayer.
While Linux and Macs don't get the majority of viruses, you also have to look at a few things objectively. For one, the majority of consumer computer users are PC users. PCs are more economical and have a larger selection of software and hardware available to the average consumer at pretty much every department and electronics store. Now look to your various flavors of OSes. Even though Linux is gaining popularity, it's still not the type of thing you'd see grandma using. With the exception of a few obscure types of OSes, that leaves Windows with the majority of the market share.
Now imagine your average consumer. They want a cheap computer that will do everything they want using an OS that isn't "too hard" for them to learn. People are inherently lazy. Once they can get their e-mail, surf the web, scan and print, play a few games and change their wallpaper do you think they really care about security until they get a virus?
Don't get me wrong, I don't support MS by any means. If anything they are quite guilty of being a lazy organization with sloppy programmers that enjoys stepping all over it's consumers. They don't innovate anymore as much as they regurgitate. That said, they didn't make the virus.
Personally, I took the single greatest and most efficient step to reducing the threat of viruses... I removed IE & Outlook. After that I installed Mozilla and a simple virus scanner with a shell extention that displays "Scans for Viruses" in a menu when I right-click. The process is basicly like this, I scan a file before I run it and I delete any e-mail from anyone I don't know. Somehow I don't see this catching on with your average consumer.
Anyway, getting back to the point, add all this up and imagine you want to the proud parent of a virus. You want to cause as much havoc and inflict as much damage as possible. So what OS would you go looking for vulnerabilities in?