Someone vibe coded the Adobe Creative Suite

[CyberB0b]

I hate all the big software companies, including Microsoft. Being an old timer, I recall when DOS upgrades were about $10. Even Windows early versions retailed for about $30. You bought it and owned it forever. Once MS had a big monopoly on desktop OS, the price of upgrades started to climb, and in many cases those upgrades were just a bunch o bug fixes and other maintenance features, bundled with some look and feel changes. A few of their versions were just junk and worse than the versions they replaced. I am also using a MS Office 2007. Works fine for my needs. I am also using Windows 7 and 10. I have to get all new hardware to upgrade to 11 and that's not happening until my PCS die. Even then I will switch to Linux in all likelihood.

I wouldn’t run EOL software like Windows 7. It is vulnerable to lots of exploits.

 

[Cowboys5217]

I wouldn’t run EOL software like Windows 7. It is vulnerable to lots of exploits.

I've been running Windows 7 without any issues.

 

[Creeper]

I wouldn’t run EOL software like Windows 7. It is vulnerable to lots of exploits.

I have firewalls and I practice good safe computing in my house. I don't open links or file attachments, I don't visit suspect web sites and I make sure my antivirus software is always up to date.

Almost all personal computer hacks, including blackmailware are the result of people opening links or attachments they receive via email.

 

[Reverend Conehead]

I have firewalls and I practice good safe computing in my house. I don't open links or file attachments, I don't visit suspect web sites and I make sure my antivirus software is always up to date.

Almost all personal computer hacks, including blackmailware are the result of people opening links or attachments they receive via email.

You'll likely be fine with safe computing practices. I would recommend making a ghost image of your hard drive and saving it on an external drive. That way if you did get trashed by malware somehow, you can just do a system restore to wipe them out. Your computing practices sound good, so you probably won't get infected, but a ghost would be a fail safe just in case. I used to use Acronis True Image to make ghost images of my Windows XP machine. Today on Linux I use Redo Rescue. You could even use Redo Rescue (it's free) if you wanted to. Even though it's a Linux program, you put it on a thumb drive and make it bootable. So you boot to a Linux thumb drive that has the software. It will back up any hard drive regardless of operating system. If your computer ever gets viruses, you just boot to your RR thumb drive and restore it to how it was before.

I use Windows 2000 and Windows 10 in a virtual machine under Linux. I've set those two Windows OS to be locked out of accessing the Internet. If they can't access the Internet, they can't get infected.

 

[Creeper]

You'll likely be fine with safe computing practices. I would recommend making a ghost image of your hard drive and saving it on an external drive. That way if you did get trashed by malware somehow, you can just do a system restore to wipe them out. Your computing practices sound good, so you probably won't get infected, but a ghost would be a fail safe just in case. I used to use Acronis True Image to make ghost images of my Windows XP machine. Today on Linux I use Redo Rescue. You could even use Redo Rescue (it's free) if you wanted to. Even though it's a Linux program, you put it on a thumb drive and make it bootable. So you boot to a Linux thumb drive that has the software. It will back up any hard drive regardless of operating system. If your computer ever gets viruses, you just boot to your RR thumb drive and restore it to how it was before.

I use Windows 2000 and Windows 10 in a virtual machine under Linux. I've set those two Windows OS to be locked out of accessing the Internet. If they can't access the Internet, they can't get infected.

If you are ghosting your drive is you need to make sure you do it before the malware gets installed in your system. Some malware is designed to lie dormant and then activate after days or even months. I religiously back up my files to a drive specifying the folders I want backed up. If my drive crashes or gets hijacked, I will erase the drive, repartition it and reinstall Windows. Then restore my files after making sure there is nothing there that shouldn't be there. It's a pain but I haven't had to do very often and mostly because of bad hardware. It's a lot like cleaning out the garage too. When I reinstall the apps, I usually don't install everything because a lot of garbage I no longer need.

 

[Reverend Conehead]

If you are ghosting your drive is you need to make sure you do it before the malware gets installed in your system. Some malware is designed to lie dormant and then activate after days or even months. I religiously back up my files to a drive specifying the folders I want backed up. If my drive crashes or gets hijacked, I will erase the drive, repartition it and reinstall Windows. Then restore my files after making sure there is nothing there that shouldn't be there. It's a pain but I haven't had to do very often and mostly because of bad hardware. It's a lot like cleaning out the garage too. When I reinstall the apps, I usually don't install everything because a lot of garbage I no longer need.

For sure. Only make ghosts of drives you know are free from malware. It takes me forever to reinstall and OS and then all my apps and to do all the settings I prefer. My system is highly customized. So what I would normally do is get the OS, all the apps, and all the settings done and then make a ghost to an external hard drive. Once done, that external drive remains unplugged so that malware can't get to it.

I started doing it that way back in Windows 95/98 because those were garbage operating systems that got buggy over time. So I restore from the ghost image would get it back in pristine shape. Today's operating systems, whether Windows, Linux, or Mac, are way more stable than the 90s-era Windows ones, but things can still go wrong with them. My big advantage for restoring from a ghost image is that I don't have to reinstall the OS and all my apps and settings from scratch. It would take me at least a week to get everything back how I like it. So a ghost restore saves me time.