more help from the flist

[cornerofmadness]

I know quite awhile back, when I was having norton issues you all had several suggestions. I have NO idea where that entry is.

I've ditched norton and was going to use Dad's system suite but I think it's having compatibility issues with Vista.

SOOOO suggestions my friends. What anti virus do you use? And a question, how can free anti viruses be as good as ones you pay for (since i Believe all the suggestions were for free ones). I mean if they were, why would ones you buy still exist?

thanks as always

Comments

[scratchingpost1.livejournal.com]

I use Zone Alarm. They have several different versions, including a free version. I think the free version just has a lot less features. I use the whole suite with antivirus, anti spyware, IM protection, and a bunch more stuff. I've been very happy with them. It's the first one I haven't ditched after a few months. I don't know how it works with Vista though as I still use XP.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

never even heard of that one. Cool thanks

[angelbuffy0.livejournal.com]

My computer tech turned me on to AVG a few years back and it works great. It is free for personal home use. But you are suppose to purchase it for business use. I recommend the tech to all my clients and last time we talked he still said AVG was his number one recommendation.

The basic free version does everything you need including updating automatically. There is no need to purchase the program for home use unless you want some of the bells and whistles.

http://free.avg.com/

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I use AVG also.

I also use adaware when I remember to actually run it.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah i had adaware too. Systems suite would have been good but it's not seeming to work correctly

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

thanks this is the one I was thinking of getting. I'm pretty sure my two techies loved this

[fickledame.livejournal.com]

AVG works great for me. Sometimes you don't need a thousand bells and whistles, just an anti-virus programme, and AVG does it just fine.

I found Norton worse than a virus - it slowed my computer to a crawl and took hours to remove.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that's sort of my experience with the new norton too

AVG was what I had in mind but I figured I'd ask around.

thanks

[makd.livejournal.com]

[raises hand.] Another vote for AVG.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

looks like i have a winner

[rahirah]

I used Trend Micro and AVG.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

thanks. never heard of Trend Micro

[absolutefiction.livejournal.com]

I know you're asking for virus stuff but let me recommend a temp-file cleaner?

It's called CCleaner and I'm sure you could google it and download it for free. It just simply deletes all your temporary files you don't need and cleans up your computer for you.

But virus scanners, I'd say get Spybot.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i have ccleaner and spybot at work

[hierath.livejournal.com]

I use a combination of AVG and Zonealarm, and they both work fine for me (I'm using XP)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

cool thanks

[adeliedreams.livejournal.com]

I use a one-two combo of AVG as has been mentioned many times before and Sunbelt Personal Firewall (http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/sunbelt-personal-firewall/) - the free version. Sunbelt's a nifty program, it lets you set it up to ask you every time anything makes an unattended connection request, from your computer or outside (you can set things to automatically accept or deny at your whim, of course). Don't want certain programs phoning home, you can have it block them. This part can be useful if you have dial-up and don't want all of your programs hitting their auto-updates as soon as you connect to the net wanting to just check your email and get back off...

As for Norton being able to sell stuff when there are free options that work as well without bringing a modern computer to it's knees... Name recognition can go a really, really long way towards selling a product. A lot of people used Norton back in the days before free options were readily available, or got it bundled with their last computer - so they just assume that they should keep buying Norton when they get their next computer...

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that's what system suite is trying to do now, what Sunbelt does. But it's not updating right at all. Which is weird since everyone in the family has this stupid thing and it works very nicely but it's not here.


you know that's exactly why i had norton. it was bundled with my earthlink

[ishte.livejournal.com]

I STRONGLY recommend you stay away from both Norton and McAffee. McAffee used to be a high quality low profile produce back in the early nineties, but since it moved from freeware to shareware to premium ware, it has bulked to be just as big a system hog as Norton is. Both of them eat up so much system resource that half the time you think there IS something on your system that it didn't catch because it takes forever to load and then bogs everything down. Norton is notorious for compatability issues and system lockups.

My recommendation is AVG free. It's a slim little program from a company called Grisoft. Recommended by the computer guru Kim Komando, and since I have switched I have never regretted it. The latest version also has a spyware scanner which works better than Adaware and Spybot combined. Additionally, it is very slim and transparent. It doesn't eat a lot of resource, can be set to run at whatever time you want it to, and generally speaking you hardly know it's there. It will update itself automatically, and you can get it here: http://free.avg.com/

You also have the option to upgrade to a premium version, which I gather has more features, but to be honest, the free version does everything I want it too. I don't need all those bells and whistles. You can download the whole file, not just the installer, and put it on your thumbdrive (It's about 48 megabytes. Barring that, I will put it on a CD for you and mail it. hahah...)

[ishte.livejournal.com]

And see... I answered before I read all your responses. (including the very link I included!) I see that I'm pretty much preaching to the choir at this late hour. ZoneAlarm I have used in the past. But Windows has a firewall of it's own now, and sometimes they don't play nice together. Vista especially concerns me with it's other horrible compatibility issues. I was not aware that it had an antivirus program also. I wasn't aware that Spybot included a virus program now either, becuase I've never been able to get it to work properly or efficiently, and now that AVG has a spyware scanner too, I find it to be a redundancy I don't want.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah spybot isn't my favorite. figured out the issue with systems suite. this computer has TWO drives. the program sees and protects one but can't seem to get into the second drive and it's freaked out

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah it's already there. it was the system i planned on before i even asked but if eveyone had something better then i would have reconsidered it. thanks