What do you consider the biggest nuisance on the Internet?

OK, I now want a Mac...but how in hell do you buy one in the Canadian boondocks? Try and find info on macs on the net. Impossible! I don't even know which one to buy, and there's no place within 4000 miles from here in my country to test "drive" one! I'm not about to go through all that hassle to visit the States just to see a mac.

Ok you say you are 4000 miles from the US. That puts you so far north that you could walk to the North Pole. So assuming a bit of exageration the istores in Canada are located at:

3401 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario M6A 3A1
(416) 785-1776

and at:

220 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2H1
(647) 258-0801

And of course there are many other retail computer stores that carry them.


There might be US stores closer to you. Or if you really are 4000 miles from the US then Oslo is a good place to go.

No, the USA is closer. I could get there in 10 hours-12 hours (ferry willing). But I have no intentions of going there. No border hassles for me. Toronto is a hard 6 days' drive from here. Isn't there a Mac in B.C.?

What type of computer do you currently have?

It's seems like your stuck between travel time and expense.

Hello Blaze Eagle, The problem is, I don't know which Mac-Apple I'd like. I'd like to try 'em out, to see the difference between word processing on Macs, as compared to Microsoft's Works (my fave), Word and Publisher. I am not about to travel to Toronto! It is way too far, road wise, and by plane, way too expensive. I have a Toshiba laptop Windows XP and an old '98 Acer desktop and boat anchor. I will never buy an Acer ever again. Two hard drive failures,no local support (call centres offshore and useless). I have 3 HP printers/scanners, and none of them talk to one another. I am sick of this nonsense and want somehting that works with everything I have. Will an Apple system do it for me? But how the hell can I tell if I can't try one out? What kind of support system will I have? It seems Apple doesn't really want to sell computers!

You want to "test drive" a Mac, correct? And there's no store close enough for a quick drive to test drive a Mac, correct?

Some stores are authorised to sale Macs but are not a Mac store, so you should call your local electronics stores to see if any are an authorised Mac dealer.

Did I help any?

I guess I should tell you I live in Canada, which is 99.99% uninhabited. It is HUGE. I live in the mainly unihabited portion. The nearest traffic light is 3 hours drive away (providing no mudslides, ice, cops, bears, deer, elk, etc. on the road and no cougar out to eat you if you stop at an outdoor biffy). There is a sort of electronics shop the nearest burg (which has...WOOooooOO...4000 people). It's a bare-minimum RadioShack and has no Macs and no one who knows much about anything. The town with the traffic light has a few more minimum elecronic stores, but no macs in sight. So I was kind of hoping there'd be some relevant and understandble info online somewhere. So far, I haven't found it.

Your in a tough spot it seems. Sorry for not knowing that.

Sorry I wasn't helpful to you.

Hey, Blaze Eagle! You tried! I can't ask for more I'm happy enough with that.

Spam seems to be the only problem that doesn't have a definitive solution. My #2 problem would be spyware/adware, but even this could be solved by a reinstallation of you OS. SPAM does not go away. For those of you that don't have Macs, there are still many solutions for the other 8 or so categories listed. I think that a problem that can follow you to any browser or computer should be considered a big threat. SPAM affects network traffic, hard disk space, memory usage, .... well what doesn't it affect? It even takes up your most valuable resource, time!

Yes, it sure is time-consuming! And the servers don't make it easy for you to filter the damn stuff. Like, anything @biz should be able to be filter. Same as those ending with .ru. But for some reason, Outlook won't do it, or keep the list. Probably because I get my hidden-attached-entrails dumped whne I turn off my computer.

Same hassles would pop up if Mac was in the majority. PC is just a bigger target!

BTW, PC is a very widely accepted generic term.

Macs should be called Apples.

Sorry, with MAC systems limitations this is not the answer for me. With AOL I have eliminated 99.8 percent of Spam. And it's free. Also AOL systems have stopped adware, pop ups, and viruses. Oh,I know only the Nerds use AOL. Now if I could stop those very funny foreign scam letters.
Go with the leader!

That seems to be a good solution for some people. However, I believe AOL has its own problems and I will continue not to use it.

I agree with your frustration about the websites such as www.pogo.com that require you to disable your firewall before you can access their games. That makes users vulnerable, even during the few seconds required to disable, load, and then enable again - just to play a game. They are not putting customers' concerns first.

I have been accessing Pogo for years without having to disable/enable my Norton Internet Security, but about 10 days ago I began to be unable to access games without disabling Norton first. I don't understand why that changed all of a sudden.

Linda

It really ticks me off when I am surfing on a topic and end up opening a site I can't close. They never seem to be sites that just open in a new window, but sites where you need to back out of. I end up having to disconnect and reconnect.

I hate them too, because usually I've gotten to them from some other path, and then there's no way to backtrack to return to whatever site I was at before it, and I might have forgotten what that other site was.

Not sure exactly what you refer too but this is a common problem. You get to a site and the back button doesnt go back to the page just before the site in front of you. Usually becuase you are in an intermediate Advertising Site inbetween where you were and where you are now. Solution: Right click on the Back Button and chose the website "two" (or more) down, from the first one in the list, this usually gets you out of the page you want out of. If you ever end up closing all sites, you can usually get back to where ever you were with the History. There is an option to change the "number of days in history", the default is 20, set it to 60 or more. If you have sites popping up all over the place, right click on each, Minimized "Internet Explorer" button in the system tray and chose "Close Group". In the worst cases, you can use "Control Alt Delete" and use "End Task" on all listings of Internet Explorer. You can group them by clicking on the column title and it will sort and group by name. One way or another, I have never had it impossible to get out of a site. Good Luck.
Dave Hungerford

You don't ever tell anyone your age online. There are so many bad people looking for youngsters to violate. This may scare you, but it may save your life! Please be careful with personal information like your age, your gender, where you live, and other things. Don't even tell a friend on line these things. Didn't your parents warn you? Giving information about yourself online is like getting into a car with a stranger!

You are so right! And that's how so many people any age get themselves into trouble online, they let their defenses down and offer private info to total strangers left and right. These people online are total strangers!! People seem to forget that point. I mean would you give your credit card # or SS# to someone you bump into on a busy city street because they asked you for the info --- of course not, then why would you do that with a faceless person online? You can't see them so they can tell you anything about themselves to make it sound authentic and credible.

Whether it's responding to spam, in chat rooms or etc. As time goes on people just need to be conscious of what's going on around them and definitely take on-line security SERIOUSLY!

Just my 5 cents worth. Sorry, I had to jump in, I have friends and family ask me so often to untangle their computer messes after they have gone to who know what for websites and they scratch their heads wondering why their computer is messed up. They mess up their PC and at the same time they are probably going to sites they shouldn't be going to..and lot's of times it's kids 9-19 yrs old.

OK..I'm done.

Yes, you raise an interesting issue--people going to questionable sites (like gambling, x-rated and ebay), where they unwittingly pick up some cyber-entrails when they leave the site. Then they unwittingly send these entrails along with a seemingly harmless joke from one of those sites to their e-buddies, and their e-buddies get 20 spams in their e-boxes the next day. The ony thing to do is "block-sender" these inconsiderate and naive friends. Too bad!

I go by BlazeEagle when I'm online.

I wonder if that person is an adult prankster instead of an child?

Hey pal!!

Who knows that is someone telling his real age

So? But if it was a little girl that didn't know any better, I want to warn her! There are some truly insane people out there, people with their damaged frontal lobes on "slow", and their limbic on "fast", with an Obsessive-Compulsive attachment. A little psychopathic, in other words. And why on earth would someone pretend to be a 9 year old girl, unless he was a little gibbled in the head, heart and soul? I say "he" only because most psychos are male, it seems--haven't got the extra x and DNA fix-up equipment.

I reread the post and was shocked. Where are the kids parents!?!!