“You change the oil in your car every 5,000 miles or so. You clean your house every week or two. Your PC needs regular maintenance as well — especially if you’re using Windows and you spend a lot of time on the Internet,” Gene Emery writes for Reuters. “Virus checkers need to be updated. Spyware or adware may have sneaked onto your PC and the clutter could be slowing everything down. I have a checklist I follow at the end of every month for keeping my computer properly tuned.”
Emery continues with the insanity (in all caps, of course) below.
Here’s my drill:
– CLEAR THE DESKTOP
– CLEAR THE PROGRAMS
– UPDATE AND RUN THE VIRUS CHECKER
– CLEAR THE CLUTTER
– UPDATE SPYWARE/ADWARE REMOVERS
– GO INTO SAFE MODE
– RUN THE SPYWARE/ADWARE REMOVERS
– RUN SCANDISK
– RUN DISK DEFRAGMENTER
“When I’m finished, I reboot the computer and it brings me back to normal,” Emery writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is “normal” if you’re using a Windows PC. This is not “normal” if you’re running Mac OS X. There are no viruses, or any of the other time-wasting things listed above, the computer just runs. Mac users are not laughing at Windows users right now. Much. We at MacDailyNews are mainly sad that so many people are subjected to the “Windows Experience.” It doesn’t have to be this way. There really is a better way – a much better way. Our Windows-only readers should consider adding a safe, secure, and powerful Mac OS X machine to their computing arsenals. For information about how to do so smoothly, please click here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Is Mac OS X really inherently more secure than Windows? – August 26, 2003
BusinessWeek’s Haddad gets it wrong; thinks low market share spares Macs from viruses – August 28, 2003
Shattering the Mac OS X ‘security through obscurity’ myth – August 28, 2003
Fortune columnist: ‘get a Mac’ to thwart viruses; right answer for the wrong reasons – September 02, 2003
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg on making the switch from Windows to Mac – September 18, 2003
New York Times: Mac OS X ‘much more secure than Windows XP’ – September 18, 2003
Columnist tries the ‘security through obscurity’ myth to defend Windows vs. Macs on virus front – October 1, 2003
Gates: Windows ‘by far the most secure’ system; tries to use ‘Mac OS X secure through obscurity’ myth – January 27, 2004
Mac OS X has no viruses; what’s wrong with Windows? – February 11, 2004
SmartMoney: Long-suffering Windows users can only dare to dream of Mac’s ease-of-use – February 12, 2004
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Gartner: Worms jack up the total cost of Microsoft Windows – May 07, 2004
Windows ‘Scob’ virus designed to steal financial data, passwords; Macintosh unaffected – June 26, 2004
Tired of patching patches to patch Windows patches? Writer suggests getting a Mac – August 03, 2004
Mossberg: Dump your Windows machine and get an Apple Macintosh to free yourself of spyware – August 25, 2004
Millions of Windows PC’s hijacked by hackers, turned into zombies; Macintosh unaffected – September 08, 2004
Security is top priority in Apple’s Mac OS X – September 12, 2004
Windows XP worm speaks to users as it deletes their files; Macintosh unaffected – September 13, 2004
University of Chicago recommends all students patch Windows at least once a day – September 14, 2004
USA Today columinst angry about Windows viruses, adware, spyware – September 15, 2004
Windows besieged by hackers; number of Windows viruses soars by more than 400% – September 20, 2004
USA Today: people are switching from Windows to Mac because of security issues – September 21, 2004
Mossberg: Apple iMac G5 ‘powerful, affordable, virus-free with better, more modern OS than Windows XP’ – September 23, 2004
Information Security Investigator says switch from Windows to Mac OS X for security – September 24, 2004
Cyber-security adviser uses Apple Macintosh to avoid Windows’ security woes – September 27, 2004
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Windows users line up to pay for spyware removal; Mac users surf Web with impunity – October 18, 2004
Ballmer blames Windows users for not upgrading systems as Microsoft’s biggest security problem – October 22, 2004
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Or better yet….. use a Mac.
But WinCrap users are like sheep…. they love to be lead around by their noses !!
They still believe Macs are more expensive than PeeCees, and that there is no software available for the Mac…
Sad state of affairs, isnt it ?
What do u expect? The majority of the world population is stupid. These are the people who are buying all the Windows crap.
After tedious defragmentation, virus checking and carefully updating her windows computer, my German professor professed to a colleague that her computer is finally fuctioning!
mac dood: “[Windows users] still believe Macs are more expensive than PeeCees, and that there is no software available for the Mac…”
Eric24601: “What do u expect? The majority of the world population is stupid.”
And just what is Apple doing to inform these people? Can Apple say “advertise”? or does the word stick in Steve’s throat?
Once a week I let MACJanitor do the job, that’s all !
Beryllium..
Sad, but true….
Instead of just running an ad once every few years or so, during the Super Bowl… His Steveness should, instead, find a different ad agency .. one who isnt afraid to be aggressive !!
Sure, a clever campaign would be great, but Im sure theres a way to be clever and aggressive…
Heres a thought…
Maybe a regular poster here, who has bandwidth to spare, could put up a website somewhere, and invite the Mac community to produce Apple commercials they would like to see…
Something akin to the community devoted to Garage Band songs, and Konfabulator “widgets”… would be a big success, I would imagine !
Think about it…. the best ones would surely be seen by “The Man”, himself… and who knows where this could lead ??
As long as there was a disclaimer saying something to the effect that these are commercials we’d like to see, I wouldnt think there would be any legal hassles…. but, then, Im not a lawyer, so I could be wrong !
Eric, it’s a sad commentary that half the people are below average intelligence.
Man, those guys may save 200 bucks when they buy the machine but then they keep paying and paying and paying and paying….
How much is their time and peace of mind worth to them anyway?
My mac routine…
1. Clear the system caches
2. Run the daily, weekly, monthly cron jobs
3. Fix permissions
4. Force new pre-binding
5. Update locate and whois databases
6. Declutter the desktop
1-5 takes ONE CLICK in Cocktail. #6 takes a minute of reorganization.
Easy as pie. No virus or spyware scans to run, no defrag (HFS+ with journaling is great).
Thanks for the idea Jeff. Here’s my mac routine:
Step 1. turn it on (from sleep or shutdown)
Step 2. play play play
Step 3. uh. There is no step 3.
Isn’t it supposed to be ‘Windows eXPerience’
Also, I do the same things that jeff does with one exception. I also run ‘Preferential Treatment’. http://homepage.mac.com/jonn8/as/html/pt.html
It makes sure that your preferences files are not corrupt. Highly recommended.
If you leave your Mac running all the time, it actually has it’s own maintenance schedule, facilitated through cron jobs. That certainly frees up time for me to take at least one whole a night a month and give my PC an enema.
insanity, or ignorance?
oh well.. at least you can play Half Life 2 right?
Beryllium:
“And just what is Apple doing to inform these people? Can Apple say “advertise”? or does the word stick in Steve’s throat?”
Nope:
http://macminute.com/2004/12/04/ministore/
http://www.apple.com/retail/
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
http://www.apple.com/ipod/
http://www.apple.com/trailers/
There’s a look at Apple’s marketing strategy.
When you have a very different kind of product, traditional marketing does not always get you the right sort of bang for the buck. I would not mind seeing Apple pimp OS X more in the major media, but I’m sure they have their reasons why they do not. The Apple stores and the iPod have been a stunning success, and both have helped bring more people to the Mac platform. Maybe they could do more, but at least what they are doing is working. Just ask Piper Jaffrey.
All of apple�s marketing money is in it�s stores.
That�s how the bean counters make the stores look more profitable….
Budget boy:
“That�s how the bean counters make the stores look more profitable….”
Uhh.. They come right out and say that the stores are their marketing engine, so it’s not exactly deception. That said, the stores have been doing very well as far as sales, thanks in no small part due to the iPod (the iPod and the stores seemed to be perfectly timed together). I imagine a good deal of the cost of the stores is in building them, not the general day to day running of them. Maybe I’m wrong though.
notatotalsucker has seen the original iMac ads.
btw – Micros**t sucks.
Time is money. Wasting time on the original author’s monthly maintenance routine is time that he could be using, enjoying life.
As for advertising, how difficult is it for people to think for themselves and do some independent research when buying a computer? Surely, advertising isn’t what they solely go upon.
My XP machine is dead reliable, then again I use it to run one app that resides on a server.
I used to run Disk Warrior once every two weeks, then I partitioned my hard drive (one OS X system partition, an OS 9 partition, and a users partition). I’ve had to run Disk Warrior once in the 8 months since I did that.
Wait, I guess that means my PowerBook is dead reliable too (though my wife would argue that her iBook is the best present ever).
>Our Windows-only readers should consider adding a safe, secure, and powerful Mac OS X machine to their computing arsenals.
Any such puppies raise a paw.
Boy, that lemmings ad was more prophetic than people thought!
My wife committed to buying my mother in law a laptop, and we did our best to get her to go with an iBook. She flat out refused, and *insisted* on a Windows PC. I told her not to bother calling me when things go wrong with it.
A friend of mine considers himself a “power user” since he does all of the things that Gene mentions in his article on a regular basis. Too bad this leaves him with no remaining time to do anything creative or productive on his Windoze computer!
The Mac drill…
-Backup anything of value
-Repair permissions
-Make coffee
-Restart
-Have a sip of coffee
-Up and running again
p.s is it me or is this magic word thing getting on peoples nerves.