Plug in failure and very slow mac

[substermac]

hi i'm new to macs - sorry for the noob questions.

getting this message plug in failure and my mac is super slow.

it's fairly new high end machine but it's been filled with junk. what can i do to make it run faster and fix this plug in failure thing.

also what is the best virus protection to get?

macbook pro OSX 10.6.8

thanks

 

[Kaveman]

There are no Virus on the Mac. The best thing to do is have a separate Admin Account and run your account as Standard.

To see why your Mac is running slow, check the Utilities > Console

 

[substermac]

i don't really believe that no 1 makes viruses or spyware for macs.... why not?

if i wanted to sell anti-virus software i'd create a demand for it 1st. isn't that what norton was?

 

[Kaveman]

Of course there are people trying to Hack the Mac. OS 9 had lots of Virus.

Anti-Virus software gives you no protection against attacks it knows nothing about.

The Mac has protection against known exploits built into Disk Mounting and Safari.

Do your homework, you will find, there are about 6 Trojans which you can download and these will install Keyloggers and backdoors. The number one source of Trojans, they are masquerading as Virus checkers, playing on the very disbelief you express.

Unix, is not new, its open source, it was developed in a multiuser environment and has had hard use at University level institutions. Its not a mystery, the BSD Unix underbelly of OS X is very hard to hack. Hence the social engineering required to get Mac users to install Trojans.

So all you need to do is:
1. Have an Admin Account with a very secure password.
2. Have all the User Accounts set as Standard, so any exploit is contained to that user Space.
3. Never Install (Use the Admin Password) software you don't trust. With the App store and System Updates, there should be no reason to get software from unknown sources.

A major cause of performance issues on OS X are the anti virus scanners, they wreak havoc.

 

[substermac]

thanks for taking the time to explain, appreciate it.

when i'm working i have to download all sorts of things... i just feel like i'm doing that with my pants down

i'll do all the things that u recommend. i have installed little snitch now. looks good BTW.

 

[Kaveman]

Just remember, those low level tools like Snitch are potential point of problems, more than once I've had to track down a problem to find that Little Snitch was installed and that version clashed with an OS update.

Also nearly all the standard Mac Apps talk to the internet, the i in iMac stands for Internet, Little Snitch can disrupt a lot of software.

 

[substermac]

thanks for the info...

if i have any probs i'll be sure to dump snitch in a hurry. actually having looked at it a bit more i'm guessing i need to run these things in some kind of sandbox type way...

thanks again Kaveman