BizReport: Tough Year For PC USers

by , 3:15 PM EST, December 29th, 2003

Remember when there was no such thing as pop-up ads and spam was just canned meat? Those were the days, right? The Internet was a new world where anything and everything was findable and possible. The Internet has changed a lot over the years; morphing from a pristine frontier, to a burgeoning metropolis, to a crime ridden ghetto, where crackers, viruses, worms, and other evil denizens lurk, waiting to pounce on the unprotected and the innocent.

Surfing the Web was like taking a stroll through a park, but according to an article in BizReport,Com, taking that stroll nowadays could mean putting you digital life in mortal danger. The article, titled, Internet Stopped Being Fun This Year, points out some of the not-so-cool possibilities that came to light this year, including spyware and worms, but the article also points out the Mac and Linux users have pretty much travelled the Internet no-man's land unscathed. Here's a bit of the article:

This is the year the Internet officially stopped being fun. The festering problems of spam, spyware, viruses, worms and pop-ups boiled over, making the online experience merely annoying at best, financially and emotionally destructive at worst.

Users of Microsoft Windows found themselves in the bull's-eye -- years of inattention to security issues in Redmond, Wash., left them exposed to the Blaster worm, the Sobig virus, Messenger Service pop-ups, spyware infestations and worse, while Mac and Linux users missed out on all the "fun."

Microsoft seems to have taken the hint and is developing a promising update to Windows XP that will fix long-standing flaws in its firewall, network and browser settings, but don't expect to see it before next summer.

The article also talks about other Internet items of interest, like the advancement of paid music download services like iTune Music Store, the proliferation of voice and video chat, and the steady ramp-up of broadband access. The article is an interesting review of happenings on the Web during 2003. Stop by BizReport.com for the full article.

The Mac Observer Spin:

This past year has been tough on PC users, which, in turn, made things a bit rough for the rest of us. While PC users scrambled to clean up infections, Mac and Linux users suffered through a barrage of crap mail generated by infected PCs. A Windows server that was caught with its virtual pants down affected everyone on the network it services, not just Windows users. So Mac and Linux users had to put up with server downtimes just like the rest of the Windows using world. No matter how you slice it, this past year was by no means a walk in the park for many Mac and Linux users.

On the other hand, while our Windows using counterparts fiddled with add-on apps to curb pop-ups and to stifle spam, Mac users, armed with Safari and Mail (OS X's e-mail app), were either unaware that there was a pop-up problem, or had a few handfuls of spam that somehow got pass Mail's fairly intelligent filters. Mac users have gone on to enjoy all of the benefits of the Internet while being affected very little by its problems. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Internet file sharing are now a stable of the Mac experience: Mac users get connected, data gets synced, and files get shared with little concern for malicious infections, and that is as it should be.

Internet Stopped Being Fun This Year