Illness or cure?

What's better for your computer than running anti-virus software? Simple answer: Getting a virus.

I finally figured out what was wrong with my workmate's new computer (you need to put the RAM into the FIRST slot, not the second) and dropped it back over. While there, she tried to use her husband's Windows XP computer to find an e-mail he'd been sent. She was cussing for minutes about how slow the machine was running.

I thought maybe he didn't have enough RAM. I looked all around Windows at snail's pace until I finally found the "Task Manager". This program is like Gnome's System Monitor, with information about CPU, memory, and network usage. His CPU was running at over 80% at every single moment it was turned on. Of the 512 megabytes of RAM in the machine, about 400 megabytes were in use. (contrast: My Ubuntu box is using 292 megabytes at the moment, with total CPU use between 1 and 5 percent).

I found the process list. This showed "avc" something ".exe" was using up most of the CPU time. I told this to my friend and she said "Oh, AVC. Something about that popped up when I started the computer. Bob said this was a really good anti-virus program".

Telling the program to kindly stop the scan worked. CPU use dropped to under 20% (well, it's an Athlon 2200 running all sorts of crapware, what do you expect?). Frets On Fire still wasn't playable, but I did wow my friends with my amazing jerky guitaring ability. About 80 additional megabytes of RAM were freed by stopping the scan too.

Everyone knows that viruses use as little CPU time and memory as possible, in order to avoid the user noticing their effects. So what's worse? Running an anti-virus program and having it keep your computer under heavy load 24/7, or having a virus that you can barely notice?

This is a case of the illness being better than the cure, I'm afraid. Ideally, everyone would run a secure operating system anyway, with a firewall router, and not open random programs that get sent through e-mail.

Work today was great! We had a busy day where we sold a lot of products. We were really happy at the end of the day. And tomorrow I'm planning on going for a long walk, if the weather holds up.

Final pieces of news: Someone recently noticed that the EULA for Safari for Windows has a clause that disallows you from running Safari for Windows on a "non-Apple computer". Heh. But this isn't news: I read the EULA that cames with my mother's iPod, and that has the same clause in it. I mentioned it online ALMOST TWO YEARS AGO.

Psystar has released a computer that comes preinstalled with Mac OS X. There's doubt over the legality of it, but I think EULAs wouldn't generally stand up in court, if properly challenged. Especially Apple's, as they distribute software for Windows PCs under the provision that you only use it on a Mac. Unfortunately, there's also doubt over whether Psystar is a legitimate company. If they give Ars Technica a review model as they promise, then that would be a good first step. Otherwise, this could just be a Medison Celebrity all over again. I like the PC cases they are using anyway. Very nice. Of course I got the idea that I could do the same thing - offer OS X on my computers - but I don't know how to support OS X when it breaks.

I put some adhesive letters spelling out my surname on the front of my workmate's PC. It looks great. It's my case badge :-)