Apple v Microsoft

[Greg]

Re windows vs apple in home and at work we run a wide variety of devices - notebooks (MacBooks and lenovos), tablets (iPads, nexus), phones (iPhones and androids), desktop pcs (mixture of W7 and W 8.1) and several servers (windows and Linux).

We really don't have any problems with windows and whilst I prefer Mac OS it's no panacea IME. iOS is roughly on a par with droid 4.4.

 

[onlyconnect]

I have Windows and Mac side by side and switch between them. No hassle with either; Windows is better for Office, as you'd expect, and Mac for iTunes, ditto. Some PC software is better than the Mac equivalent eg Dragon Dictate.

Tim

 

[garyi]

Office 2013 is hard to use though don't you think, the whole ribbon thing is just not good.

 

[Colin Barron]

I use a box called adtrap

getadtrap.com

It's basically an ad centric firewall that hacks out adverts and malware, pop ups and blocks calls home to servers that are a little too chatty. It let's you use as supported apps without ads and it costs off funding opportunities for websites trying to monetise themselves using google! it basically makes you a freeloader. It blocks ads on devices that do their best to keep ads running like iPads and it removes huge chunks of visual clutter, it updates automatically and keeps ahead of all methods to circumvent it. It also makes using Windows a lot nicer and a lot less malware visible because all IP is shrouded using wrappers inside the box. very clever bit of kit had it a couple of years now and aside from the occasional reboot its great.

Ps yes it can be allowed to pass ads via PFM through. better still I can block the dailymail.co.uk and vile links people post... Half the links Arye and 7v post are sliced off at the source. I never got to see the beheading video, it's like a parental control for grown ups.

If this is what it takes to make Windows usable you would have thought that with 100,000 super brain staff they would be selling something like this with the software. With their product volume these boxes would be as cheap as chips.

 

[Greg]

Colin as a mac user you are vulnerable to advertising, phishing and numerous other risks just like anyone else.

 

[onlyconnect]

Office 2013 is hard to use though don't you think, the whole ribbon thing is just not good.

No problem with the ribbon. Not a big deal really; it's easier to find stuff than when it was buried in menus, but it does take up more screen space than I would like.

Tim

 

[Paul R]

If this is what it takes to make Windows usable you would have thought that with 100,000 super brain staff they would be selling something like this with the software. With their product volume these boxes would be as cheap as chips.

Internet Explorer supports 'do not call' lists, confusingly known as 'tracking protection lists'.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/internet-explorer/use-tracking-protection#ie=ie-11-win-7

I think most anti-malware and anti-virus software is itself malware. If you limit yourself to Windows Defender and lock down the browser with a TPL then it should be hard to install software you really don't want. And remember Apple isn't far behind...

Paul

 

[Fox]

If this is what it takes to make Windows usable you would have thought that with 100,000 super brain staff they would be selling something like this with the software. With their product volume these boxes would be as cheap as chips.

Colin as a mac user you are vulnerable to advertising, phishing and numerous other risks just like anyone else.

At the end of the day it all looks the same through a web browser. Adtrap does what it says on the tin, it can also be used to treat comments sections of websites and blogs as if they were adverts, I have not seen the comments section of a newspaper website for two years now. The Daily Mail was nuked 30 seconds after i got it working. I nuke PFM when I need to get work done and un-nuke it when I have time for pointless circularity...

Its something people can do in their own software settings, but I just want a machine that does it all for me, keeps up to date, slices off ads and malware and gives me the same ad free experience across all platforms in this house...