Closed's recommendations please?

closed

Probably the number one problem raised on this techie forum is, I'm looking for a new machine because the one I have is on it's last legs, what should I buy?

Updaters and bloat are often the cause (especially on XP era machines), not infections caused by not installing a patch. An hours work, and it's back to it's former glory.

matttye

closed wrote: »

Probably the number one problem raised on this techie forum is, I'm looking for a new machine because the one I have is on it's last legs, what should I buy?

Updaters and bloat are often the cause (especially on XP era machines), not infections caused by not installing a patch. An hours work, and it's back to it's former glory.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this I think

I've never seen PCs that are dramatically slowed down by software updaters, which tend to be very light utilities.

GunJack

The point that closed makes is totally valid - just this updater, just that auto windows update, it's bitsn'pieces here and there that add up over a period of time...and I've lost count of the number of vista machines I've had to rebuild because windows auto-updates were running in the background, user doesn't realise, and ends up powering down the machine with the power button "because it wasn't responding". Result - unbootable and not recoverable, full rebuild needed and if really unlucky, loss of pics, music, etc. I never recommend full auto-update for windows, just tell it to tell me there are updates waiting, then custom update to choose what & when they get done...far, far safer

matttye

GunJack wrote: »

The point that closed makes is totally valid - just this updater, just that auto windows update, it's bitsn'pieces here and there that add up over a period of time...and I've lost count of the number of vista machines I've had to rebuild because windows auto-updates were running in the background, user doesn't realise, and ends up powering down the machine with the power button "because it wasn't responding". Result - unbootable and not recoverable, full rebuild needed and if really unlucky, loss of pics, music, etc. I never recommend full auto-update for windows, just tell it to tell me there are updates waiting, then custom update to choose what & when they get done...far, far safer

Vista was a trainwreck of an OS, but that's besides the point... you should only power off by holding in the power button as a last resort as it doesn't allow data to be saved and cuts power immediately. The problem there is the user being impatient, NOT windows update.

That's like unplugging your external hard drive in the middle of a backup and then complaining about data corruption.

Windows update will take time and it might slow down the PC, but it downloads large fixes for vulnerabilities present in the OS, so that should be expected.

somersethillbilly

GunJack wrote: »

The point that closed makes is totally valid - just this updater, just that auto windows update, it's bitsn'pieces here and there that add up over a period of time...

Totally agree, the aggregation of marginal losses takes its toll. I am writing this on a machine with a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron processor and 512MB SDRAM @100MHz, running XP Pro SP3 with no auto updates running at all, everything is up to date, running lean, clean and stable. It is a dinosaur of a machine but runs great, serves me well and has certainly saved me some money not having to replace it.

matttye

somersethillbilly wrote: »

Totally agree, the aggregation of marginal losses takes its toll. I am writing this on a machine with a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron processor and 512MB SDRAM @100MHz, running XP Pro SP3 with no auto updates running at all, everything is up to date, running lean, clean and stable. It is a dinosaur of a machine but runs great, serves me well and has certainly saved me some money not having to replace it.

Everything is up to date - great! No problem there. If people want to update manually that's fine.

What I've been saying in this thread is that it is more important to install updates/patches than the marginal performance gains you will get by not updating anything. If you do it all manually, more power to you. :T

GunJack

Of course update stuff, it'd be daft not to. The issue is the PITA of auto-updates on almost everything, the fact that USERS don't very often understand what's happening with their machine hence the power-off/system corruption I alluded to earlier, and the way all these auto-update elements of programs build up causing un-needed bloat and slowing a machine down....

matttye

GunJack wrote: »

Of course update stuff, it'd be daft not to. The issue is the PITA of auto-updates on almost everything, the fact that USERS don't very often understand what's happening with their machine hence the power-off/system corruption I alluded to earlier, and the way all these auto-update elements of programs build up causing un-needed bloat and slowing a machine down....

I don't think it does cause unneeded bloat though when users don't have know how to update manually. The patches need to be installed either automatically or manually, and given that a lot of users don't know/care how to do it manually, automatically makes sense.

It might cause a slightly slowdown but it's not "unneeded." I just think people in this thread are playing down the importance of keeping software up to date.

VanMan2007

Thanks as always, closed; and to matttye and others for your contributions. Sorry for the delay in replying.

Okay, sounds like it's in order. No, no problems with it matttye, I'm just a little OCD! But I don't have the necessary pc knowledge to interpret all the info a hijack thread puts out.

Thanks again, guys.

waddler_8

You only have to read any of the recent AV stats for the current threat landscape to see how important it is to keep software patched.

Kaspersky have "Malicious URL" as the no.1 threat by some margin.

Most malicious URL detections were for websites containing exploits.

http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792255/Kaspersky_Security_Bulletin_2012_The_overall_statistics_for_2012#3

Detections for the Blackhole exploit kit always rank high (No.1 again at time of posting).
http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/webthreats/info/blackhole-exploit-kit/