Bob writes: : Before the virus protection programs got to the point they're at now the : only three operating systems that weren't getting infected were Unix, : Linux, and MacOS. Isn't BeOS what all the airport traffic controllers use? The main gateways for these intrusions on Windows are still the poorly designed browser and the mail program. I had a customer who repetitively needed her machine swept clean every month or so because of her surfing habits - after installing Opera she's been bug free for 5 months now :) Another formerly rapid collector of viruses, trojans and other nasties has been clean for over 6 months after installing Opera and, since he didn't like the inbuilt mailer, pocomail. : Now if Elements 4.0 ran on something besides XP........ Collusion! <rant> There are now so many games that will only run on XP, yet hackers took to some of them and found the game was doing an OS check on install and if it didn't find XP the installation would not go ahead. After tampering with the installers they were able to get the game to happily load on '98. Why were game manufacturers deliberately eliminating potential users? Why will PS SE only load on XP machines - what special feature relies on a function OF XP? What is going on with software companies?? Why are so many using OS checks in their installers? The game/programs/utilities will often run perfectly well under 'lesser' (read as no longer 'supported', unprofitable OS's) so all I can deduce is that companies are colluding with MS to help them force consumers into updates they neither want nor necessarily need. If that sounds all a bit far fetched then cast back to the Sony rootkit issue and the lack of action among Antivirus companies. </rant> grrrr k
