As I have mentioned before, I have always been a PC guy. Going back to to “good” old days of DOS 3.x, I have prided myself on my ability to handle “real” computing. I sure as heck didn’t need any graphical interface in the mid to late 1980’s – those were for those losers who owned Macs – you remember – the computers with the little 9 inch screens that could print fonts other than Courier.
I became a GUI convert only when Microsoft told me that the GUI was cool. Who cared that Windows 95 blatantly ripped off some of the Mac’s features? After all, Apple had ripped off the mouse and the GUI from Xerox, so they really didn’t have much high moral ground to stand on (an interesting aside – a friend once showed me an AT&T computer running Unix with a mouse and GUI that predated the Mac by some number of years – kind of cool).
As time went on, I became more secure in my choice of computer – after all, Apple was a niche player while Microsoft commanded the vast majority of the market. Windows 98 was followed by 2000, which was followed by XP (I try to forget Windows ME). Each successive version got better and better. Then things started to get ugly on the Internet. We had long used Virus scanners – heck, viruses were originally more prevalent on the Mac than on the PC simply becasuse the GUI on the Mac afforded an easier hiding place than the DOS command line did on the PC. Spyware, Adware, and Rootkits all became part of the common vernacular. I did all the right things – installed Spyware scanners and used a third party personal firewall to protect my system. I am fairly competent when it comes to networking and security, so the constant pop-up from my firewall asking if I wanted to allow access to this or that, while annoying, was understandable and a small price to pay for the security it afforded. Never mind that all of this extra software stole memory and CPU cycles.
The problem came when I recently upgraded my parents from Windows 98 to Windows XP. I wanted to make sure that their computers would not become zombies for some scumbag to use in their Internet extortion ring. My parents are not sophisticated computer users. In their late 70’s, I’m pretty pleased by how technically savy they are. They have multiple computers and high speed Internet. The issue comes when the security software that they use (particularly the personal firewall) sends and unending flury of questions at them. They have no idea how to answer them? Is this action safe? How about that? In the end, I get so annoyed, off comes the personal firewall and I go searching for new virus scanners, spyware scanners, and other security software that is smart enough to shut the heck up and do its job without constant user input.
If I had to do it all over again today, I probably would get my parents a Mac. Granted, they are not bulletproof by any stretch of the imagination, but they are a heck of a lot more secure than a PC is for the average user. I can lock my PC down pretty tightly, but I can’t expect my parents to be able to do the same. This, then, is the big issue that Microsoft has to overcome – build Vista so that it it knows how to shut the heck up and keep itself secure. From what I have seen in the Vista betas, this is not going to be the case – if anything, Vista is going to be even more noisy than Windows XP is with respect to asking permission to do things – sure, I know that this will keep Vista more secure – those scum that write the programs that mess with computers will have to go back to the drawing boards to come up with new ways to screw with it, but the constant stream of questions from the OS will only serve to confuse users. Microsoft needs to develop either and OS or a profile that would allow people to lock their computers down, do what they need to do, and not ask a bunch of confusing questions.
Now, I have to get back to my Mom’s computer – seems like the Anti-Virus and the Firewall are having another argument…
-Jim
