Apple Inc (AAPL)

[neye_eve]

blue is correct, esp on one point...

as long as you're seen as the "rescuer", the machine is never going to be safe. Speaking as someone who's run 12 years combined between 3 PCs with a total of 0 virus incidents and 1 spyware incident, it's actually really easy to stay virus free, but you have to have the right mindset:

1) it's ok to use non microsoft products: use firefox or another non-IE browser. IE 6 with XP SP2 is actually pretty darn good for this, but only available on XP I think, so the Win2k machine should be running an alternate browser.

2) it's ok to use a free virus checker like AVG, which *does* have an e-mail portion (I only use webmail, so I can't vouch for how well the e-mail protection works for a real client though).

3) you must have a firewall. XP SP2 built in is fine. a hardware firewall is better.

4) let things like spybot and adaware run proactively, and do full scans on schedules.

Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but in reality, almost all of this is updated automatically, so after the 1 hour of setup, it's pretty darn easy to be 1% vulnerable instead of 90% vulnerable.

oh, and #5) it's ok to use a mac or linux (SuSE Personal 9.1 was AWESOMELY EASY to install, detected all hardware automatically, comes with open office and firefox). If there's no reason to be tied to windows, definitely consider which alternatives *may* be right for the individual situation.

neye