Re: Virus experience

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

[Bill Troop:]

>Anyway, the moral is, that it is no longer enough not to open email
>attachments. You now (if you are misfortunate enough to be on Windows)

   Becoming Windows-free could make life a bit difficult if you want to run
DOS programs such as XyWrite, and you also want to use more recent things such
as Internet browsers or e-mail. Do you think the best thing would be to run two
computers: one running on DOS (not Windows), for any DOS programs, then another
running on Linux (or possibly Macintosh)? But it's going to make life very
difficult indeed if you want to more than occasionally transfer information from
one to the other, or share files across them. If you duplicated files to each
computer, you'd be faced with the constant problem of having copies of the same
file getting out of synchronization with each other, and having to update the
ones which were out of date.
   Still, I've considered ways of managing two computers (one of them running
on DOS) and allowing files to be accessible to each, but haven't worked out a
practical way of doing it. But it would make XyWrite more usable for me, for
instance. I can scarcely use it reliably so far, because it doesn't seem to get
on with Windows 95, and I don't entirely trust it in that environment. (It
actually freezes in some situations when I set to 50 lines on the screen, which
I think I have asked about on the list before. In general, I don't really trust
any DOS program running with Windows 95, and I guess it wasn't really designed
to run them at all.) It would be nice if I could work this out, and let XyWrite
have its own space and do things its own way, without having to worry about it
clashing with an operating system that wasn't designed to accommodate it
properly.
   It would be interesting to know how many list members use it with DOS
(completely without Windows), and how many use it with one variety of Windows or
another, and whether the latter group have many problems.


>must have AV running constantly in the background.

   If not Norton, can you recommend a couple of other good ones? I thought
Norton was considered one of the best, actually. I'm not running any anti-virus
program at all, and am just paranoid about opening attachments (including some
which have appeared on this list, which might, for all I now, be perfectly
legitimate files relating to XyWrite). But people have warned me I shouldn't
continue like this.
   It sounds, from comments on this list, that some members also see no need
to run anti-virus programs. So is this practice (not using ani-virus programs)
just being set in one's ways, or are there really good reasons in favour of not
using one? I have read of instances where they have raised false alarms, and in
other ways caused trouble with the operating system. I suppose my own non-use
of them so far is due to a general distrust of Windows, and a reluctance to make
my computer any more complex than it already is.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.