After running the course and now completing the use of the top 4 retail programs out there, and then, I tried "NO" protection for 3 months. Here's what I found: McAfee: Although user friendly, it's invasive and a marketing annoyance! Their tech support has fallen drastically and their license agreement has this tiny note that after one year it's not usable. Even if you wanted to use it without updates. When compared to others its miss ratio is major. Norton: Practically no tech support and lock-ups were prolific. Has some prob's with XP and requires a tecky to find those problems. I'm sorry but this is a total piece of garbage. When compared, it's miss ratio ranked below McAfee, but are the problems really worth it? Panda: Not too bad. Their "TruPrevent" feature does a good job of looking twice. Although this feature is a resource hog. Setup was way too difficult for average users. Again, tech support lacks when asking real tech questions on the product. Miss ratio was right in there with Norton. PC Armor: When you compare the price and what you get it's probably the best bang for retail protection software. After the rebate, it was $10! Miss ratio was the least of all of them and I liked the interactive site for checks. The best part of this was that I found the FREE "AVG" software did just as good as all of the retail versions if not better. No bells and whistles with just what you need. Thanks to Devilock76's suggestion, on here, I gave it a try a while back. I've really found that for a home user you don't need virus protection unless you’re a complete idiot! The average virus software takes 24 hours to actually get updated after a new virus is found. By then most people know what to look for and are cautious. Anyway, everytime someone has a PC problem they blame it on a virus, when 9 times out of 10 it's spyware. After 3 months of "NO" protection I have no found viruses. If you resist those "Flash Media" download prompts, don't open email attachments from everybody in the world, stay away from anything that says "FREE" on the web and maintain a good firewall your going to be OK. If you feel a necessary urge to open that email attachment of Mickey Mouse taking his pants off, well, then you deserve to get that virus, cause your an idiot. I have a good feeling that the majority of those developing viruses have seen there's no money in it and have moved on to spyware, which pays. A good firewall, popup blocker and a spyware program will take care of that.
What about emails from friends whose PCs are infected? I generally open attachments from friends if the email looks legit. Isn't that an opening for me to become infected if I am not running an antivirus program?
Yes it is an opening. In my hate for virus software I may have stepped a boundry in my post. Thanks for bringing that point up. Because AVG is free I do run it ocasionally to check. But I do not leave it turned on. To me they are resource hogs and I need every bit of process speed I can get. I have yet to "need" to open any attachments not sent to me other than business email. And then I feel a good level of security that their system is scanning incoming & outgoing email. So in my instance, the lack of constant protection works for me. I review all attachments I receive for file extension designations and my "real" need to open it. If your attaching image files it's not necessary to do it via email anymore. With a multitude of free file posting sites you can transfer via post & review & save. Thanks again, and as Emily Litella (Saturday Night Live) always said "nevermind" ...lol.
That's interesting, because I ran Zone Alarm on my prior PC. Seemed to provide good protection, but took SOOOOOOOOOO long to boot up that I came to hate it. Now I have XP Home Edition and the tech who set me up said I didn't need Zone Alarm anymore. But I run McAfee too and since January, no virus infections.
Sorry but I dissagree 100% with you. I run Norton Security 2005 and I have had no problems what so ever. I get notices all the time of backdoor trojans and viruses trying to penetrate different ports. You telling these people, I mean average freaking people that know just enough to be dangerous, that most AV software sucks?? Dude what are you thinking? We don't live in a Linux world!! MS dominates all and their **** causes most of the problems. You can tell these people what you want but take it from someone who deals with global security daily ******* around without protection is going to get someone really knocked up.
Ken it will never happen. MS has to much of a strong hold. To think that all of layer three is Solaris, and FreeBSD?? C'mon dude. That's just not reality. If you want to talk DNS, DHCP, SOA, its used just for simplicity.
I would have to agree with Dream Warrior a little on this one. There are way to many Porn and Music downloaders to not have a virus protection on your PC. In my experience in the past year and a half of being on my own, most of my repairs have been to viruses ans well as spyware. The AVG anti-virs doesn't use nearly as much of the system resources that Norton and McAfee do. The free AVG is good. The big difference between the free and the payed for AVG is that the payed AVG downloads updates multiple times a day. A good firewall is still neccessary especially with wireless becoming ever more popular. Another point that was brought up is email attachments from friends. Even if you are the most cautious and don't do any of those "bad things" on the internet, a friend or family member might and if they send you a picture of their children playing in the backyard it could possibly be infected. It is always better to be safe than sorry. Most people dont do back ups so unless they are willing to risk losing their info I would put a virus protection on the PC. Just my 4 to 5 cents worth. Randy
