None of Symantec's product range is relevant to Macs and, as you have discovered, will often damage your machine's performance. For most practical purposes, you have been immunised against viruses, worms, etc by buying a Mac and, while the PC world lives in justified fear of disaster (whether from hackers or Microsoft itself through its spyware) Mac users can take a more laid back view of the world. While the act of joining your machine to the web will always have an element of danger about it, downloading the security patches from Apple on a regular basis will meet all the everyday forms of attack and then some. Save your money on antivirus products and enjoy the sunshine in your part of the world. If your Jaguar acts up, try www.macattorney.com/tutorial.html as a good source of helpful tips to put things right.

I'm sure you are right "on the money" . . so to speak. Symantec is definitely a part of the Microsoft world force, with Mac as an add-on. Again, they tout the their new Norton AV 9.0 as built strictly for the OS X 10.2.x system. I've not received as yet, nor of course, installed it. You think I'd be better of sending it back? My gut tells me Norton hides things all over the hard drive and that is the reason behind my OS X system having to be completely reinstalled. I surely do not want to go through that again. I liked some of the features Virex 7.2 via .Mac had, but it did not seem to run except when connected to .Mac and would not scan email nor websites as I surfed, only at startup. So, while I paid Apple for it, I don't own it. Thank you, for your insight into these issues.

Advertising is a wonderful thing and, in the best snake-oil tradition, Semantec will claim many things to promote their products. I don't know what the law is in your part of the world but, if you can get your money back for goods unused, my advice would be to do just that.

If you want to use something sensible, for example to block pop-up ads while you're surfing and to manage those annoying cookies, switch to http://www.Mozilla.org right now rather than continue with Explorer or the unmodified Netscape. There are also some good e-mail scan packages out there, but whether you can install them will depend on your general skills and knowledge around Macs.

Mustn't ramble on.

Good luck

David

I've found a file I want to download but for days have had difficulty. I constantly get LW to try to connect only to receive a message saing "Waiting (blank seconds) for 1 busy." What does that mean? Do I just hang tight and await a connection or is there something I can do to speed things along?

beyond the usual "repeat search", sometimes in 2.9.11 I noticed "rare" files would seem to get stuck downloading. Perhaps it was coincidence, but killing the download in the downloads pane and redownloading it from the search results sometimes helped. Command click to show vendor and location--you might see a pattern in which ones get "stuck" and don't respond to lists of new vendors found by "repeat search."

Aloha

Well, in theory, it means that you are in the queue being run by this host. I run with 15 slots on offer and four or five people queue waiting in turn to be one of the 15. I run a stable and efficient host so the wait is usually rewarded with a slot, but many hosts are unsociable. For example, they may screw down the bandwidth allocation so that little if any remains for uploading. So, if you are really "lucky" and can actually start downloading a file from such a host, it might take hours. If you're in that queue, you might never get to the end of it before you lose the connection. Frankly, I rarely wait very long. I run a long want list and, if something is taking up one of my active slots inactively, I tend to go for the next file on my list and come back to the original search later on. If you leave anything over 15 minutes between repeat searches, you should find a different set of hits assuming you are not searching for something particularly rare. If you are in search of the rare, you will have to try at "off-peak" times when fewer people may be trying to get access to what you want. However, I have things on my list that have been there for months but, since I have a collectors mentality, half the fun of this game lies in the hunt.

Next?

David

You are very patient, David and I appreicate your kindness. Your words of wisdom will be heeded and I'll get there, eventually. Thank you for some very good ideas. I guess the saying "May you live in interesting times" can be either good tidings or a curse. These are, for sure, interesting times. Mahalo and aloha.

You're making me sound like one of those cargo gods that made a bit of a splash during WWII — occasional goodies hitting the mark and building up a rep. Good luck in your searches, my friend. Sometimes I think the times are too interesting but at least boredom is kept at bay.

David

Things are going very well, indeed. Files are coming and going. Thank you! I appreciate your patience; now, I'll not press my luck and say 'roger that and out!'
Aloha,
LP

How can I avoid failed downloads?