[DM-MUG] Fwd: [MacLaw] Why I use a Mac

[Darcy Baston]

I hear "virus ate my motherboard" stories all the time, and it's 
misleading. Hardware can fail on its own without any software.

I also hear "virus ate my hard drive" stories with even greater 
frequency, and that's also misleading. Windows can crash for any other 
number of reasons, and hard drives can also fail on their own.

If the computer crashed while the 12 year old was working on a 
document, there may be document recovery options available. Many word 
processors auto-save. If the hard drive died completely, I highly doubt 
it was a virus. I don't know of any virus that can do that. There's 
also little ego reward to a virus writer if they can't track the 
progress of their work. A hardware failure doesn't communicate back to 
the author that a hit was made. That's why today's viruses are mostly 
internet based. Quick-fix thrills, as with a McDonald's burger, is also 
in the group consciousness of virus writers. Internet enabled viruses 
serve that purpose. Disabling hardware removes a chance that a 
computer/node will spread their virus. They much prefer your hardware 
stays healthy so they can install remote control software to use your 
machine without you knowing, see what's on your screen, track 
keystrokes and see files on your hard drive.

Viruses can sit in the boot records of drives, which aren't always 
erased while formatting (even with /s to install io.sys, msdos.sys etc. 
in the early sectors of the drive). The hardware engineer could have 
replaced the master boot record with the command "fdisk /mbr".

I love Mac and promote it as the choice platform exclusively, but all 
the problems with the 12 year old's computer and the one that was used 
for parts, don't sound PC platform centric. The same things can happen 
to Mac platforms because the hard drives are the same IDE/Serial ATA 
ones that PCs use. Motherboards, a product of manufacturing, fall into 
just as much failure probability as other circuits by other companies, 
regardless of who they are 3rd parties for. In manufacturing, it's 
impossible to make a perfect process. There is ALWAYS a stream of 
improperly made products showing up, but these are factored into 
quality/cost probability models. Dead pixels anyone?

The probability of viral attack is lower on a Mac of course. WAY lower! 
Woohoo!

But yeah, it's so much easier and doesn't require anyone to learn 
anything new, to just blame computer problems on a virus. :)

I had to service a 1986 clone computer with a 10MB hard drive in it. It 
had worked fine for 6 years, and when it began failing, some tech 
person told the owner they had a virus and it was killing the drive. I 
knew that was BS, and told the people that the next time the computer 
wouldn't boot, slap the top of the computer with some enthusiasm. It 
worked every time. I wanted them to do that to show that those old 
drives, that weren't as air tight as the ones today, eventually got 
"sticky". They just ditched the old 1986 computer, but it's a good 
point that even in 1992, people were already blaming hardware failures 
on virii.

warm wishes,
Darcy

On Dec 2, 2004, at 7:43 AM, Victoria L. Herring wrote:

> From another list, a cautionary tale...as if we don't know.
>
>> My sister recently recounted their problems with their virus plagued 
>> Windows
>> computer, which crashed just as my nephew was putting the finishing 
>> touches
>> on his school report. Needless to say, that 12 year old was quite 
>> upset. The
>> problem was traced to a virus, even though anti- virus software was 
>> running
>> on the machine. My brother-in-law, who is a hardware engineer, later
>> installed a different hard drive onto the machine. Before he put it 
>> in, he
>> reformatted the drive. Even with a "clean" drive, the anti-virus 
>> software
>> still found THREE viruses!
>>
>> Guess where my brother-in-law got the replacement hard drive? It came 
>> out of
>> his sister's computer, rendered useless because a virus had made its 
>> way
>> onto the motherboard.
>>
>> Give me a Mac any day!