Hi Nathan,

I love my macs too. Been a pro support tech for 6 years now, and a
happy mac user since the days of the 800K mac plus.

Macs have never been immune to data loss. Always back up your data
regularly, and store a backup in a safe, secure place.

People make mistakes, and 100% of  hard drives will eventually fail.
I've also seen a few computers lost to Break-and-enter theft.

Good computing habits are worth developing, regardless of OS. And
FWIW, Apple will be adding a system-restore type utility to OS 10.5

But not everything that goes wrong with a PC is due to malicious code...

One thing I mentioned to John Off-list is that XP has a nasty habit
of driving the CPU utilization crazy if there's a job waiting for a
stalled printer on a parallel port (LPT) connection. That one
happened to me a year or two ago, and it was very awkward to locate
the problem.

Another thing that just occurred to me is the thermal throttling that
is now built into Intel CPU's. If the heat of the CPU gets above 65
degrees the hardware automatically drops the speed to avoid damaging
the chip. My machine became un-usable in much the same way that John
has reported... it ran just fine once I cleaned the thick wads of cat
hair off the CPU cooler.

Happy Trails,

Greg Potts
1973/74/75/77/79 Westfakia "Bob the Tomato"
www.pottsfamily.ca/westfakia
www.busesofthecorn.com

On 20-Nov-06, at 4:46 PM, Nathaniel Poole wrote:

> I was waiting for someone to say that. I run an iMac and a Macbook,
> and no
> firewall, no antivirus, and no need for system restore, either. The
> cool
> thing with these new machines is that they will also run windows if
> I need
> them to. Heaven forbid.
>
> Nathaniel
>
>
> On 11/20/06 1:29 PM, "Neal Barrentine" <vwneal@BLUEMARBLE.NET> wrote:
>
>> John:
>> The BEST thing to do would be to get an Apple computer.
>> Neal Barrentine
>> Bloomington, Indiana
>> 1986 GL
>> 1960 Baja Bug
>>
>> On Nov 20, 2006, at 3:07 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
>>
>>> Subject: Re: Calling all V-gon List Computer Guru's
>>>
>>> The simplest thing to do, is to backup what data you want to keep,
>>> wipe the system and reinstall windows.
>>>
>>> Sudhir
>>>
>>> On 11/20/06, John Rodgers <inua@charter.net> wrote:
>>>> I;m having a problem with my PC. Hope someone can help.
>>>>
>>>> Cursor moves spasmodically across the screen. Jerkily, that is.
>>>> I have
>>>> cursor  controls set to the highest speed now, No difference.
>>>>
>>>> Audio files played on the computer often stall, stop and repeat, as
>>>> well
>>>> as the audio in video files, all when played on the computer.
>>>>
>>>> Captured videos are also  choppy, and the audio is choppy. when
>>>> played
>>>> on both the computer and my Phillips  DVD/CD player
>>>>
>>>> I note that something on my computer is drawing up to 100% on
>>>> the CPU
>>>> at
>>>> times even when the machine is at idle. This totally mystifies
>>>> me. Any
>>>> ideas?? Obviously something is running and I can't find what.
>>>>
>>>> Thank,
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> John Rodgers
>>>> 88 GL Driver
>>>> Chelsea, AL
>>>>
>>>>