OT I realise, but I really value the opinions of people in this ng...
I've been using AVG (free version) for years now, apparently without problems, but somebody mentioned to me the other day that I shouldn't even be thinking of using the free AVG and that the paid-for version was a must if I was going to use AVG at all.
Now I come to think of it, my kids' machine is running awfully slowly and unreliably recently. Time to re-evaluate my a/v strategy I reckon.
So what do people recommend? A free solution would be a nice-to-have as I have 5 machines to cover; but obviously by far the key issue is to be safe.
Switch to Linux, or one of the BSD variants, or anything except Windows!
Semi serious, Ubuntu Linux in particular is now pretty easy to install and use for an ex Windows user and (at the moment at least) you can totally forget about all that anti-virus stuff. It saves huge amounts of hassle and time not having to worry about keeping virus protection up to date, not to mention not having any problems due to virus protection preventing things from working properly.
My personal experience was that AVG declined in usability, often timing out when trying to update as well as other issues with slowing my system.
Anyway, I converted to AVAST which has suited my purpose very well. On initial installation you have to apply for a key (free) to enable the software but, so far, there's no sign of having to renew regularly like AVG - AVAST seems to be a one-time only key. AVAST is also highly configurable and you can enable or disable any its features according to need. To the best of my memory, AVAST has received consistently favourable reviews.
snipped-for-privacy@isbd.co.uk coughed up some electrons that declared:
I agree. I have to boot to Windows occasionally to run CAD and Sketchup and I hate the experience. Mail and web are OK because I run Firefox and Thunderbird, same as Windows, but everything else is slow and painful in comparison.
OpenOffice is generally capable of handling any MS Office document that normal people lob around (like the school emailings, where there's an MS Word attachment containing 2 parapgraphs of plain text - yes I have emailed the headmistress about the sillyness of doing that!
I accept that mega complex MS Office docs with embedded subdocs or complex calculations are likely to come a cropper, but how often does anyone see those docs?
DVDs play better under Linux too, becuase you're not forced to watch all the trailers and silly warnings.
I consider the paid for version of AVG to be the best. It is easy to install and maintain (automatic if you set it up right) and is effective. The AVG support service has been appalling since version 8 (it used to be superb, getting a response in less than an hour) but version 8 seems more stable and less likely to require support in the first place (I have only needed it for customers' computers still working on version 7).
What are the key things in practice you get for the paid version? Screening messaging services looks like one; though if you caught a virus that way while using AVG free, wouldn't AVG free detect it later anyway. I suppose my thinking is if the paid-for version is necessary for safety, what is the point of the continued existence of the free one as a viable product?
AVG for many years but when I was foced to have a new PC packaged with Windont Vista I had loads of problems. Avast is great, Updates correctly and stuff. and you can have a little animated icon that spins when it's scanning.
I would suggest Avast FREE over AVG FREE every time although AVG is still working fine on my windows XP machine.
For a kids machine I would go Linux even though I've found trying to get simple things like Flash and embeded videos to work is a right faff on Ubuntu. The things that should "just work" can be a real PITA wasting much time. And I'm not a PC numpty. I have made a Freesco firewall box in the early days for our shop network and also set-up an openBSD box)
on a couple of laptops (it was more difficult to install on one because it needed more memory than XP) and whilst it's fine for most everyday things it's the little bits that you can't do either easily or at all (without editing complicated stuff) that put most people off (inc me).
At least it will print to my Samba shared printer so that's one important thing (to me) it can do that OSX cant.
Often the only difference between the paid for version and the free version is that you get no telephone support line with the free one.
Try the free version of Avast for virus checking and something like Ad-aware for anti spyware, but the free licence would be for personal use and on one machine.
There are few differences between the free and paid for versions. One is the number of included modules. Of those there are a couple missing from the free one that are worth having - the web shield that scans file downloads from web sites and also instant messaging applications, and the anti rootkit scanner. If you are running with a USB modem, then the firewall from the paid version is also worth having (although less necessary behind a router assuming your OS has a basic firewall anyway).
The other big difference, is the free version uses different update servers that have a lower capacity. Hence you may get upgrade timeouts (depending on what time of day you set it to update), and it also defaults to fewer updates per day (the paid one does it every 4 hours)
Which version are you running? If its still on 7.5 then replace it with
8.5.
One thing to bear in mind with AV applications is that they change constantly. Over a period time many have gone through good and bad patches. E.g. for several years Norton became an almost unusable resource hog unless you had the latest and greatest hardware. More recent versions are reported to be better thought. McAfee did well for a long time and then started borking machines completely at random. Again it is meant to be better now. AVG had a spell toward the end of the 7 and 7.5 product lifespans of getting too resource hungry - as did several other vendors apps.
The scope of what is expected from AV has also changed - the real threat are no longer standard viruses intent on trashing your hard drive, but malware applications that attempt to infect and reside on a computer without doing any obvious damage. Alas this has greatly increased the scope of things that need scanning for, and is probably the reason for many AV apps going through a bloated phase.
I used the paid for AVG almost exclusively now... (on customers computers as well as mine). Over the last few years I think we have only had a couple of incidents of something getting on a machine that should not have - and that was usually when some other factor had broken the update mechanism first.
I use several anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and it's quite surprising what some miss, and others pick up. Perhaps there are some infections that none of them pick up ... So, without using other programs, how would you know what it had missed?
The machine at my place of work run the latest McAfee and it really kills performance if we want to do anything but simple word processing :( Unfortunately users have no option to turn off the checking.
I too run occasionally various spyware programs, but I also once in a while run alternatives to Avira - they have never found anything Avira has missed.
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