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I'm new, Hello.

I am soon going to be getting a new computer for production, and I was wandering, do you people with seperate computers for production have the internet on it?

Or do you keep it safe from sneaky viruses?

i have 4 laptops, one for the web, one for production, one for live shows and one to prop under the desk table to stop it from shaking.

Edit: i have one Macbook i use for everything. But if i used a windows based PC i would consider a separate computer for production whereby i wouldnt require background running applications (anti-virus/spyware) which are a result of using the internet on a machine.

spencerTron wrote:i have 4 laptops, one for the web, one for production, one for live shows and one to prop under the desk table to stop it from shaking.

Well, Thats one way of using a laptop

So internet on a production pc is a no no?

Depends how much you value your production environment.

If it's very important then I would say definitely no but if you are careful and know what you are doing then it's fine. I've never had a PC go down because of a virus or any other bullshit because I protect myself and use a bit of common sense.

I'll probally play it safe, just incase my common sense fails me.... again.

I have one laptop with two drive partitions, one XP with just music stuff on, and one Vista 'cos I'm a masochist and don't wan't my computer to work properly
Sometimes its good to have internet on your production machine, for drivers and stuff. Install good antivirus, then when you don't need the 'net, disable your network adaptor and turn off the antivirus. The main thing is to only install what you need and avoid games/Pr0n etc

Fair, can you like... (bit of a noob here) download drivers, then move them over to your production pc, or doesnt it work like that?

I have 3 comps

they are all internet safe and free of viruses

I no longer go onto sites that might cause me to catch an infection and I stay away from cracked plugins and the like

but yeah, if I still used illegal software, I'd most certainly keep that comp off the net.

Skawe wrote:Fair, can you like... (bit of a noob here) download drivers, then move them over to your production pc, or doesnt it work like that?

well you need to have the same registery info if they are serial/copy protected dlls
the only way you're really susceptible to viruses on a non internet connected pc is if you are using dodgy warez/cracked plugins that could have viruses embedded in keygens/cracks etc

I have internet on my workstation, I ain't scared. The biggest thing I do is keep my C drive prog files only that way it is no big deal if I need to reformat. An evening of downtime worst case.

i wish i had two computers, cause i waste so much time on the internet when i should be making tunes.

im currently in the process of getting out of the horrible habit.

Fair enough, i'll give it some thought.

Cheers guys

What's the point of having a seperate computer for production? The only reason I can see is live performance...

glottis5 wrote:What's the point of having a seperate computer for production? The only reason I can see is live performance...

Something to do with paranoia apparently...

a pc setup for audio production benefits from different tweeks and hardware then say a gaming pc for starters

Like what? Can't figure out why it'd be better to have 2 comps rather than one hell of a good comp.

xp tweaks for one, don't need a fancy gfx card etc plus dunno bout you but net can be a distraction for some people
hell google windows xp daw tweaks
like right now i have 2 boxes on one very basic dated hardware linux machine for net browsing, listening to mp3s, file storage crap like that
and win xp daw machine which i'm trying to prep to clone a hard drive on and get back up and running 100%

Ask yourself this question.

Are you really going to be visiting the sort of shadey websites that install malicious software?

Do you really not trust your download sources?

Personally I run AVG and Ad-Aware pro along with a firewall but only because its stupid not too - i only visit trusted websites an no warez sites and I use common sense when oppening e-mail attachments etc.

If you are carefull and stay out of the warez sites, the threat isnt that big.

if you are going to get a new machine and use it for internets as well as music, here is what you need to do.

• get norton ghost or another disk imaging utility
  
  install your OS and nothing else, and image it
  
  install your music apps AND NOTHING ELSE, and image it

that way if things do go tits up, you always have a clean install to revert back to. back samples + song files up every week, but you should be doing that already tbh

ran internet on my productin pc for the best part of a decade now,

and i still maintain it's only people whoreally don't know what they're doing that get problems from viruses etc.

can't really do it any other way as i also play games on my pc so need the net for that and my laptop is shite.