What do you use?

Beep · Wed 04 May, 2011 17.00

OS: Mac OS X [Ten, but I doubt many of you are American pre teens who say "OS Ecks"] Snow Leopard - it's pretty condescending actually, so I have it Boot Camped and Win 7 Pro installed on that.
Web Browser: Google Chrome
E-mail: Microsoft Office Outlook for Mac 2011
Mock Making: Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 [God bless LEA Licensing!]
Design coursework: Google SketchUp
Twitter: Destroy Twitter 2.0 - Adobe Air app
VLC for Music (all formats now!) and Video (again, all formats, excluding MOV for some reason, QT prefers it no matter how many times I tell OS X I don't.)
Utils/Security: Sophos AV, OnyX, Skype, FileZilla, Microsoft Remote Desktop Client for Mac (what a name) and Microsoft Messenger (works better on a Mac, shame about the transfer speeds)

Critique · Wed 04 May, 2011 17.30

Is there that much of a need for Security software on a Mac?

Should also note that I use McAfee as my security program of choice. However, I'm noticing it's shortcomings, as I was using something completley different to rid myself of a virus McAfee thought didn't exist.

woah · Wed 04 May, 2011 17.36

I find that Microsoft Security Essentials does the job perfectly. AVG used to be my choice, but even that is now as bloated and useless as Norton and McAfee.

Beep · Wed 04 May, 2011 17.38

If it is a computer and can connect to the web, I'd say it needs some form of security, not iPhones and the like (some refer to them as computers) but certainly laptops and desktops. Sophos have a free tool for Mac which I use for scanning hard drives every week.

Philip · Wed 04 May, 2011 18.14

Ant wrote:I also use Spotify if there's any music I don't want to buy. Shame about the limits on Spotify Free but you can hardly blame them really. I've actually seen a few of my Facebook friends saying they may be tempted by Spotify Premium, so I can't see it's popularity declining too much thankfully.

Yeah, it only really hits hard on the people who use it all the time, which to be honest should either get the full version of Spotify or just buy the songs off another site.

Alexia · Wed 04 May, 2011 18.17

woah wrote:I find that Microsoft Security Essentials does the job perfectly. AVG used to be my choice, but even that is now as bloated and useless as Norton and McAfee.

Plus a fully-up-to-date updated AVG 8.0 let Virut onto my system. Never trusted it, or recommended it, since. Comodo is good, if a little sluggish on the update / scan. It does have nifty features like blocking traffic or killing connections, and its Sandbox is a very useful idea. Plus it learns, so if you install something it doesn't know, you tell it it's OK to install and it remembers it for the next time you install / update it.

madmusician · Wed 04 May, 2011 21.07

Pretty standard stuff:

Windows 7 Professional (32 bit)
Chrome is my browser
Microsoft Office 2007 (although not Outlook - I just use webmail/my iPhone and Google Calendar)
iTunes/Windows Media Player for music (iTunes for my music library and phone syncing etc, Media Player for just opening files), Windows Media Player/VLC for video, sometimes use Spotify, but it's blocked here at work (I live in a boarding school during term time) so I'm not using it so much now
Sibelius 6 for music notation (a genuinely brilliant piece of software that makes my musical life so much easier)
DVDx for ripping my homemade DVDs
Audacity for audio editing
Core FTP for basic uploading and stuff
PDF Creator for, well, creating PDFs
Dropbox for syncing files
McAfee (the free BT Broadband version) for Anti Virus

Having said all that, I'm planning to "become" a Mac over the summer, so I imagine there'll be a substantial shift at that point.

Sput · Wed 04 May, 2011 21.09

I'm enjoying how Beep finds Mac OS condescending whilst simultaneously being unable to use it. I had a go at changing the assigned application for .mov and had no problem. Right click a .mov > open with > Other > Choose a thing and tick "always use this"

Incidentally I don't use security software on my Mac, but worry about it on my Android.

Pete · Wed 04 May, 2011 21.11

Sput wrote:I'm enjoying how Beep finds Mac OS condescending whilst simultaneously being unable to use it. I had a go at changing the assigned application for .mov and had no problem. Right click a .mov > open with > Other > Choose a thing and tick "always use this"

isn't that idenitcal to the manner in which you do it in windows?

WillPS · Wed 04 May, 2011 21.17

Pete wrote:
Sput wrote:I'm enjoying how Beep finds Mac OS condescending whilst simultaneously being unable to use it. I had a go at changing the assigned application for .mov and had no problem. Right click a .mov > open with > Other > Choose a thing and tick "always use this"
isn't that idenitcal to the manner in which you do it in windows?

Skip "other" and then yes.

bilky asko · Wed 04 May, 2011 21.22

woah wrote:I find that Microsoft Security Essentials does the job perfectly. AVG used to be my choice, but even that is now as bloated and useless as Norton and McAfee.

This anti-virus dossier shows that Microsoft's offering is the best free one.