Re: Virus Protection

JGibson wrote:
On Dec 10, 7:42 am, dam <dave.mel...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 10, 7:38 am, PrinceGunter <slippymississi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have always had McAfee for as long as I can remember. I vaguely
remember buying a copy of Norton many many years ago. Which virus
protection software is the best overall?
There are plenty of good, free AV programs such as Avast, AVG, etc.,
even Microsoft's free Security Essentials is getting some decent
press. There is no reason to purchase an AV program in this day and
age. For malware, look to SpyBot.

I wouldn't recommend AVG. That was the biggest slowdown of both my
laptop and my desktop ever. Most of the times, I would have rather
had a virus than had AVG on my computer.


Actually, the new version of AVG (9+) is pretty much RUTSing other AVs in terms of the performance hit your PC takes running it. But, yeah, the older versions (8 and below) were pretty brutal if you didn't have a decent windows machine. AVG's link-scanner is pretty top-notch as well. These days, about all you have to do to pick up an infection is click on the wrong link - having a link-scanner check and approve those Google results is great for the not-so-tech savvy (I showed my Mom how to use this, cuz I was getting sick of pulling scareware off her laptop).

Why not go with Linux? It's Security through Obscurity, but there just aren't any real threats out there with this OS (at the moment) - and you can always use an emulator like wine if you have a must-have windows app.

I think Linux is really going to take off as more and more apps become web-based - MS is about to launch web-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (early next year) to compete with GoogleApps. At that point, what strictly-windows app does a person need? (also, OpenOffice is a fine non-web based alternative that's free and available for all major OSs).

Heck, with Ubuntu Linux, you can't even claim it's a usability issue anymore - if anything, the Package Manager makes it easier to install stuff than with Windows...

Anyhow. GIMP instead of Photoshop, Eclipse or Netbeans are fine IDEs, OpenOffice instead of MS Office, Firefox/Thunderbird instead of Explorer/OE/Windows Live Mail... more and more apps moving to the "cloud"... hard for me to think of an app I would need MS for these days...

Cheers.
.

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