Can i change the /user path to something else but remove the /user path for good ?

I just don't think it's very important: http://drupal.org/security/secure-configuration. But you should be able to do it with some apache rewrite foo.

Did anyone tried google??

http://groups.drupal.org/node/20925

I just did this and works perfectly

Here is a link to a great solution that actually works.
http://drupal.org/project/rename_admin_paths

The module on the page is for Drupal 7. However, there is also a function on the page for Drupal 6 users which can be inserted into your settings.php file. I needed a solution for D6 and the code given on the page worked great for one change (i.e. mysite.com/user). I wanted to change two paths, for user and for admin. It was necessary to modify the code a bit. This worked very well and I am including the code here...hoping it will help someone out.

/* admin and user path change */
function custom_url_rewrite_outbound(&$path, &$options, $original_path) {
    if (preg_match('|^user(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $path = 'something'. $matches[1];
    }
	if (preg_match('|^admin(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $path = 'something-else'. $matches[1];
    }
}

function custom_url_rewrite_inbound(&$result, $path, $path_language) {
    if (preg_match('|^something(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $result = 'user'. $matches[1];
    }
	if (preg_match('|^something-else(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $result = 'admin'. $matches[1];
    }
    if (preg_match('|^user(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $result = '404'. $matches[1];
    }
	if (preg_match('|^admin(?![^/])(.*)|', $path, $matches)) {
        $result = '404'. $matches[1];
    }
}
/* end admin and user path change */

Thanks to my friend Trillian for writing the code.
Hope this is helpful.
Dig ya later, DOC

Thank you for your answer. It was simple and perfect. No need to write/install modules or change the settings.php file.

You are a genius! 90% of my sites are updated only by me but bots attempting to log in use up huge amounts of bandwidth and CPU.

wow... great job :)
Thanks for your useful contribution.
BTW, you posted wrong url of the module page. Correct url is:
http://drupal.org/project/rename_admin_paths