Reasons why not to go Macintosh

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Reason 11 : "Mate of mine can get me loads of free PC software"

Validity level:

Plentiful free software is available for both platforms. Freeware and open source software is made avilable free of charge by their authors, and freely downloadable from the Internet.

But if you're talking about commercial software, then I presume you must be meaning pirated commercial software.

Warez warez warez!

Piracy exists on all platforms, but simply on the larger userbase of Windows alone, there will undoubtedly be more people you know and places on the Internet where you can get pirated and cracked software if you want it...

But you do know that such practices are not legal, don't you?

Well, whatever, I'll leave that up to you and your conscience.

Warning warning warning!

But before you do, one word of warning: If you're going to use software from non-legitimate and questionable sources, can you be absolutely sure its contents are completely safe and unmolested?

You may think you're getting the latest expensive software on the market for free, but could it possibly have come packaged covertly with a 'Trojan horse' virus, which could install back door access your computer system, open up all your files for anyone to see, steal your online resources to send thousands of spam e-mails all over the world, and then steal your banking and credit card details? That's quite a price to pay for "free" software, wouldn't you say?

So...

...okay, that's perhaps slightly hyperboled to make a 'worst case scenario' point, but still, the potential is there; particularly if you've chosen to use the computer platform where historically, security breaches such as this are not exactly unprecedented.

See reason 24 – 'Macs get viruses, just like PCs do' – for more details of the risks of viruses and suchlike.

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