Surviving A Computer

I was talking to Dr. Bob, the Geek's eye doc. Dr. Bob's a great guy, smart, and can find your eyes in a dark room, but about computers...well he isn't exactly Bill Gates.

Dr. Bob's oldest just got a new computer. Spanking new Dell XPS. Nice machine, although he did ignore my advice about buying a Mac, but more on that later.

Dr. Bob wanted to know what he needed to do to keep that spanking new XPS running like the fairly efficient watch it should be. So, Dr. Bob, here it is. You have to have that hard conversation with Son Dan:

Practice safe computing! Know who your sleeping with (theoretically that is) and don't forget the condom.

• Spyware! It will make you slow and stupid so get a Spyware program (recommendations below)
• Viruses! Take you over and make you a spammer, so get an Anti-Virus program.
  

Safe computing. Know where your going on the internet and in email. Here are two things you need to know:

1. Stephen King has nightmares about the things that lurk out there on the internet. Really Really scary stuff. Things with claws, and long sharp teeth.
2. Free stuff will cost you your hard drive and could get you owned by some network of nasty spammers.
3. (oh yeah there are really 3 things) porn kills.

Scary stuff. Viruses, Spyware, Trojans. Use to be that viruses just wanted to pop up a message on your screen, maybe about the Beetles, or World Peace or the war. Or destroy our hard drive or erase it. Now it is more likely that a virus will sit quietly on your hard drive, giving you no clue it's there. Then late at night going to work for some spammer sending thousands of emails out to the world offering low cost Viagra or letters from Tonya who admires a longer organ. And getting you banned from AOL for life because it gets traced back to you. Or, acting as a porn server, and getting you arrested for child pornography there by ruining your life.

Spyware, that can slow your computer to a crawl as it pops up messages about stopping spam...just click here. So, get a Spyware filter. Install it and keep it updated. The good news is the best ones are free! Microsoft, the very evil empire that brought you software that is susceptible to spyware, makes a free spyware program. Its called Defender, and much as this is a first here, just click for the site. I actually recommend running this and Ad-aware (not the pro version the free one) together. They work by blocking spyware, and you need to keep them updated. Regularly.

Then you need an anti-virus. Generally a virus takes over your computer. Makes it a slave. I recommend a single purpose program, not a suite that loads down your system. AVG makes a free one: FREE for God's sake go down load it. If you really need to buy one, buy one that is only an anti-virus. Update everyday. Everyday. There are always setting, set yours to update.

Now that you have these spyware and anti-virus programs installed, set them for automatic updates. Do it...now...I'll wait.

Now about that free stuff. Do not download free stuff from the internet. I know, all those songs and television shows and movies, and everyone does it, so why shouldn't you down load them too. HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION? There is no faster way to become infected. A song on iTunes is 99 cents. Your computer was, what, almost $2000. If you are downloading, you will be infected. Period. Sooner of later it will happen, probably sooner. So knock it off. It isn't worth it. Oh, and by the way, the music and movie industry have no sense of humor about this and they do prosecute, and they love to mess with college kids cause they can.

PORN...there I said it. My suggestion, as hard as it is for the young, stay away. There are so many things that you can catch from it, besides the obvious. Its another case of, get them to come to a site, then infect them. There have been several virus infections that infect windows user just by their visiting a site. And guess what, they are porn sites. You go, click a picture and...your sending emails for a spammer to half the world.

I know this is tough stuff, but you got to follow the rules, no downloads from unknown sources, no click here to see pretty girls, no porn sites, wear your spyware protection and always assume its a scam.

Or, if you are scared and afraid, BUY A MAC. At Amazon, right there at the top of the blog.