Rationalizing My Discontent - Part 2

Let's face it: Microsoft Windows carries an enormous amount of excess baggage, no matter what version you are running. Just look at the system tray after a normal startup: you have your "normal" Windows system security programs running, a third party security suite running, quite possibly a file indexer running, and who knows what else.

I work the night shift at a large county agency, and their XP computers are almost useless at times because of all the indexing and security scanning that happens at night. I'll grant you that they are not the latest whiz-bang machines, but wouldn't it be nice to side-step a good portion of the minefield of viruses, and all the scanning that goes with it, so you can just do your work?

While I am not implying that there are absolutely no security threats with a Linux system, I have experienced none of them. There are several reasons that I can think of why this is so:

1. I generally avoid the more hazardous areas of the internet.
2. I use Gmail, which catches the great majority of spam before it gets to my machine
3. Linux is simply more secure, because it requires an administrator's password to install or change system software or files.
4. Face it: most viruses are written for Windows systems!

I've never met a Linux that was slower than Windows XP, let alone Vista.