Anti-Virus Software

[Jeff Gaines]

XP already has a built in firewall.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Only just able to get Corel Draw and Rhino for OS-X. I agree, if you can afford it, and the total inability to fix it when it goes wrong then Macs are the best 'I hate computers, but it usually just works' solution.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Which fortunately you can completely disable.

[John Rumm]

Yup, seconded!

[Dave]

It's a good stable system.

About 5 or 7 years ago I was in B&Q and noticed that they were still using win 95.

Dave

[Spamlet]

A while ago SWMBO was given a laptop to use for a particular job. I was surprised when I looked at it, that there was no antivirus, so I installed MS Security Essentials. This worked very well on the newish laptop, but on my old one, it had slowed it to a standstill - on that I use Avast and it works fine. All went well, until SWMBO had to hand the laptop back to be updated by the firm that owned it. When it came back, in addition to the MSE, Sophos *and* McAfee, had been added. It is now the sluggiest slug you ever did see! Thankfully that job is finishing soon...

S

[Clive George]

Boringly it works for me. I don't get virus problems (and even didn't when I didn't run AV - just taking care seemed to work well). And in the corporate environments where XP rules, Mac or *nix simply ain't going to happen, no matter how fantastic they may be. Too many people speak only windows, including too many suppliers.

I used DOS for about 6 months. I had a few years on OS/2, and since then it's been NT based systems for desktop, and a mix of servers. DOS is rubbish, NT is a real OS (that'll invite the normal responses :-) ). My personal foible is using the command line for lots of things. I prefer

*nix servers, but plenty of other people can't cope with anything but windows so I have to suffer.

[PeterC]

As I don't have a router, the FW has to be on the PC.

I use Comodo FW and D+ but the AV isn't installed (as opposed to installed and disabled), then Avast! free sa, er, AV as I like it stopping most malware before it gets here - both web and e-mail.

For on-demand there's Spybot, SAS and MBAM, with Emco's Malware Destroyer as a quick scan as first check. The Hosts file is about 186,000 entries and that stops some sites.

Opera, with FF as a secondary browser, helps, as does IE8 being blocked by the FW.

OE is not used and isn't even on the PC.

Can't use MSE as it won't play with my over-nLited XP Pro SP3. I take this as A Good Sign!

[Mike Barnes]

geoff :

"something"?

[Mike Clarke]

But bear in mind that any firewall (or AV package) running on the PC is open to being attacked and disabled by the nasties that it's trying to defeat, just like any other application.

[Tim Streater]

I'd agree that NT was a real OS, but then it was written by Dave Cutler after MS had poached him from DEC. Even then he had to bolt drive letters (such as C:) and other 1970's innovations on top to make it behave like Windows. For what it was, I found it to be reasonably useable and stable (more so than XP).

[Huge]

You omitted "on the desktop". Linux is making huge inroads in the server space, even against Windows servers.

[Huge]

And "knowing" Dave Cutler, I expect he did it in a couple of weekends.

[Huge]

Install a Smoothwall.

It's free, and I think I paid £10 for the PC it runs on (a Dell Optiplex - it doesn't need posh hardware). The ethernet cards came out of my junk box.

[Man at B&Q]

Same here, and Windows is the only option for the apps I need to use.

Still don't run any AV software.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

So can XP if you use the right version.

MBQ

[Clive George]

Implied by "XP" - is anybody insane enough to use XP as a server OS? (licensing restrictions being the problem). (ok, I'm sure some people are...)

I'm not so sure about "huge inroads" against Windows servers. I've got one install on windows which I'd traditionally have put on *nix, but because the vendor wrote it on MS SQL we had no choice. Even stuff like VMware relies on windows servers (not the hosts, but the management stuff). This irritates me, because I prefer *nix servers :-(

[Vortex7]

I vote for Avast!

[Huge]

Oh, I am. Happy to discuss why in email if you want.

[Huge]

Four. I run it in the Windows XP VM I keep hanging about for stuff where I really, really, really need a Windows machine.