Anti-Virus Software

[moncton golden flames]

My current subscription of Norton Anti-Virus has just expired, and I am contemplating on re-newing very soon. A co-worker of mine has recently told me that the anti-virus provided by Shaw is sifficient enough and I don't really need a Norton type software.

I have a desktop and a new laptop arriving this week, both in need of some form of security. What is the best thing to do to protect my pc's from evil? Is Norton my best option, or are there others out there that are better? Any advice would be great.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by moncton golden flames

My current subscription of Norton Anti-Virus has just expired, and I am contemplating on re-newing very soon. A co-worker of mine has recently told me that the anti-virus provided by Shaw is sifficient enough and I don't really need a Norton type software.

I have a desktop and a new laptop arriving this week, both in need of some form of security. What is the best thing to do to protect my pc's from evil? Is Norton my best option, or are there others out there that are better? Any advice would be great.

Norton and McAffee both suck donkey balls.

If it is for personal use, AVG and Avast are both free and both do at least as good a job (and in my opinion, much better) than the venerable old Norton.

If you insist on paying, both those offer a more enhanced feature set that you can pay for, or NOD32 and Kaspersky are good. There are other good ones, too; but those are a few of the main names.

[sureLoss]

got to agree AVG does a pretty good job for free

[llama64]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

Norton and McAffee both suck donkey balls.

Well put. People need to learn this simple fact.

Personally I don't use an anti-virus program. But when installing things for friends and family, I generally use AVG since it's decently made and updated frequently.

[moncton golden flames]

Thanks for the input so far guys. Does this mean I should avoid relying solely on Shaw's Anti-Virus?

[llama64]

Originally Posted by moncton golden flames

Thanks for the input so far guys. Does this mean I should avoid relying solely on Shaw's Anti-Virus?

I've never been a fan of the ISP provided security tools, but from what I hear, the Shaw Secure package is decent. You don't need more then one anti-virus tool though so don't worry about relying on just one.

To cover the basics you need:
- anti-virus (you should never need to pay for this unless you are a business)
- anti-spyware (Windows Defender and Ad-Aware should cover you)
- Don't use Internet Explorer 6. I'd recommend Firefox or Opera to be safe though.

This is assuming you have Windows XP or Vista. If you have Windows ME/98/95... well, that's like bringing a knife to a gun fight if you connect it to the Internet.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by llama64

If you have Windows ME/98/95... well, that's like bringing a butter knife to a gun fight if you connect it to the Internet.

Fixed that for you.

[Hack&Lube]

In my opinion, straight-up antivirus' are pretty much useless for the casual user in today's day and age. The lines between viruses and spyware are all blurred into malware and there are plenty of good free tools that will take care of all the bases.

Get Spybot S&D, update it, immunize your system, scan. Setup tea-timer and it will protect your system registry.

[Vulcan]

Here's a newsletter from a guy who takes security pretty seriously.

http://techsupportalert.com/issues/al_current.htm