Scott, Les, others...DAW and the Web -stay off-line?

[GerryJ]

Hi, I've got an older PC works fine for web/word processing etc.

I'll soon get a more powerful machine for DAW...do some of y'all who do music full or part-time keep your DAWs off line, to avoid all the mal-ware?
In general, if you've got a good mid-level program like Cubase SX3, or Samplitude, etc - do you have to download fixes and updates very often? Thanks for your input.

my DAW is an appliance, I turn it on and hit record.

audio apps only, and a usb wireless network adapter gets plugged in when I need to transfer Samplitude updates to it. Which is not very often. A CD burner and firewire drive handle audio files.

[T.Wesley]

I connect my DAW machine to the hub about once a month to download OS updates and that's about it. Everything else internet-wise gets done on a separate machine. Other than ProTools, the only software on it is what gets installed when you put OSX on the machine. Lean, mean recording machine

--chiba

[dehughes]

Originally posted by Chiba
I connect my DAW machine to the hub about once a month to download OS updates and that's about it. Everything else internet-wise gets done on a separate machine.

--chiba

That's the smart way to do it. I'd have a separate machine if space and $$$ allowed...


david

[Bassomatic]

Originally posted by dehughes
That's the smart way to do it. I'd have a separate machine if space and $$$ allowed...


david

That's the way i used to do it. Then i got sick of the hassle. Now i wish i never had, as i've picked up some very insidious nasties of late. Once everything's fixed up, i'm back to keeping the machines separated.

btw, i'm typing this from Matte's Mac, where i've been slaving over some drum sounds for a mix. If it were a PC, i'd be pretty worried. (But i'd also have a nice freeware convolution verb like SIR available....

i'm blathering, time to crash.

[LSchefman]

I actually do everything on my Mac, but it's not the safest approach.

[Scott Peterson]

My DAW is a seperate machine It has a built-in ethernet connection on the motherboard. I plug it in and download updates, plug-ins or whatever only when I need to. No email; only net access and only on the network when I need to be.

Never had one issue on that machine.

[GuitslingerTim]

In tweaking my computer for audio, I turned off 22 services and the startup feature in MSCONFIG. I also set the internet security level to medium. I run without a virus scanner, but with the firewall turned on, and I've yet to be infected by anything, including viruses or adware. Occasionally popups will appear in a diminished form at the bottom of the screen, but are easily closed.

I do adhere to a few rules. When IE alerts me that starting a download is potentially dangerous, I don't unless I'm purchasing something like soundfonts or samples, or receiving an update. I never click on banners, nor do I open attachments.

[amper]

By day, I'm a technology consultant, and very familiar with the foibles of both PC's and Mac's. I recently picked up a new Daul 2GHz G5 to use specifically as a DAW. It's got two 160GB SATA HDDs that are partitioned six ways to Sunday.

The first drive has three partitions and system installs on all three. The first one is the primary DAW partition, the second one is the backup DAW partition, the third is the "other" partition. The second disk also has three partitions. The first two are my recording partitions, and the third is my archive/software storage partition. Then there's the 250GB FW800 external that archives all my CD's and ripped files.

I generally only go online when booted up to the "General Use" partition. Despite the fact that it's a Mac, and there's very little danger of contracting any malware/viruses, etc...it's better to be safe than sorry. Which is also why I have a nice big fat firewall between me and the 3Mbit DSL line.

I still use my eMac as my primary desktop, and my iBook as my primary laptop, but I also have a PC desktop and PC laptop for some specialized software.

With my partitioning scheme, even if anything should happen to the partition I'm currently working on, I won't lose too much time getting back to work. If I were using a Wintel PC as a DAW, I'd keep it entirely off-line. Software updates can always be downloaded, transferred via USB drive and installed manually.

[aleclee]

I'm somewhere in between. I don't limit my recording PC's network/internet access but it doesn't run Outlook and browsing is pretty limited. I do a pretty good job of avoiding malware on my non-music computers so I don't worry too much about the DAW given its limited exposure.

[wilder]

I used to keep my DAW of the net, but now I just disable the network connection until I need to get something specific. It's stayed pretty clean. I used to dual boot and have the network connection disabled on the DAW partition.

Chris