Official Antivirus and Computer Help Thread
Chrome
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Joined: Sep 2008
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From: NoVA
Originally Posted by metros' timestamp='1323624497' post='21227999
How do people like firefox vs. chrome? I haven't tried chrome but used firefox in the past.
Previously I used AVG but wasn't really that impressed. I'm asking now so I can stick with whatever antivirus I end up using in the future. XP will be staying.
Has anyone used vipre? I was recommended that by one computer guy. Really wanted to verify before jumping in on one guys opinion.
Previously I used AVG but wasn't really that impressed. I'm asking now so I can stick with whatever antivirus I end up using in the future. XP will be staying.
Has anyone used vipre? I was recommended that by one computer guy. Really wanted to verify before jumping in on one guys opinion.
if you didnt like AVG go with avast! I have it on 3/4 of my computers and love it but it all depends on which one you like. if you want whenever i can find time to come and get that stuff done to the front of my car and head lights that we talked about during the parade laps. I got windows 7 that I can get to you for free.
Overall, thanks for all the recommendations!
Joined: May 2008
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From: MD
with all of this.
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From: ATL
Look at what Dave (wingman) mentioned about MalwareBytes. I highly recommend looking into that as well. Even running the free version it should help significantly. It won't protect you from viruses but half of the crap out there is malware/spyware and that's what it will help against.
Joined: Jul 2005
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I can't believe we've gotten this far in this thread without:
- Don't use an Administrator account for any thing but administrative tasks. Use a non-privileged account for web surfing, etc. This is the single best advice you will find in here.
- McAfee, Norton, AVG, etc. use the same basic hooks right into the OS these days. Not much of a performance difference for each and they've all gotten very efficient.
- Most exploits these days come from Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash vulnerabilities. Disable the in-browser display for Reader and PDF support for JavaScript. Check for updates weekly. Use FlashBlock or similar plug-in to choose what Flash you *NEED* to display. Every thing else is probably an ad. anyway.
- Once your system has been infected, there is no cleaning it. Format and reinstall. I don't care if the symptoms go away, you don't know if you have been rootkit'd.
- On the same token as above, don't use pirated operating systems. They are almost all rootkit'd.
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From: Marshall, VA.
Haha I didn't think we were going to get all technical up in here 
A technical discussion on computer threats could take a decade.....and as true IT people we would have to have a meeting about it. Maybe schedule a meeting to have a meeting about a meeting to discuss this. The only thing I'd disagree with is "Not much of a performance difference for each". At my last company we spent A LOT of hours bench testing various solutions and found McAfee and Norton (was the worst) both caused a heavy process load. Of course you can tweak them to run as a lower priority or reduce functionality, but I mean just as a install all features and go some of them really crushed a processor. Not to mention if he is running XP, his processor is probably not optimal to handle a robust solution. (I'm assuming a lot of things in this scenario)
This might be similar to having a conversation about what the best car is. Everyone will have a different opinion.
A technical discussion on computer threats could take a decade.....and as true IT people we would have to have a meeting about it. Maybe schedule a meeting to have a meeting about a meeting to discuss this. The only thing I'd disagree with is "Not much of a performance difference for each". At my last company we spent A LOT of hours bench testing various solutions and found McAfee and Norton (was the worst) both caused a heavy process load. Of course you can tweak them to run as a lower priority or reduce functionality, but I mean just as a install all features and go some of them really crushed a processor. Not to mention if he is running XP, his processor is probably not optimal to handle a robust solution. (I'm assuming a lot of things in this scenario) This might be similar to having a conversation about what the best car is. Everyone will have a different opinion.
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Keywords being "install all features and go." You get a lot more than just an antivirus these days with the off the shelf McAfee and Norton products. Comparing apples-to-apples though, the antivirus services will be similar. 
Joined: Jul 2005
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You're right, though. Every one is going to have their opinion, but it's going to boil down to educating yourself and making the right choice for your needs.
Whether it's a commercial product that traps more known risks and has a more rapid release of signatures, or a free product that's a little more streamlined and narrow in it's scope of coverage but doesn't cost you any thing... The take away here is just to run something. These days with doing taxes, banking, etc all on my PC and with liability concerns -- I am more worried about unauthorized use of my home computer and data theft, than I am concerned with data loss as a result of a malicious virus. (I'll be damned if I want to have to go to court and defend myself because some malware was proxying illegal material through my connection.)
Also, some numbers to support all the conjecture:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/21058..._compared.html
Whether it's a commercial product that traps more known risks and has a more rapid release of signatures, or a free product that's a little more streamlined and narrow in it's scope of coverage but doesn't cost you any thing... The take away here is just to run something. These days with doing taxes, banking, etc all on my PC and with liability concerns -- I am more worried about unauthorized use of my home computer and data theft, than I am concerned with data loss as a result of a malicious virus. (I'll be damned if I want to have to go to court and defend myself because some malware was proxying illegal material through my connection.)
Also, some numbers to support all the conjecture:
Although you lose some effectiveness against malware with free antivirus, you do gain a little speed. The free products we looked at were faster on average than the paid products in 9 of the 12 speed tests we take into account. Again, the difference was slight--the largest speed difference was around 10 percent. Both free and paid antivirus increased system startup times: A test PC with no antivirus software installed booted up in 40.1 seconds on average. With free antivirus installed, the test system started up in 44.1 seconds on average; and with paid antivirus installed, startup times increased to 46 seconds. It's hard to pin down the exact reason for this difference, but again, the difference is slight enough that it's basically statistically insignificant.
Scan speeds, however, are a mixed bag. In our on-demand scan tests, paid antivirus programs edged out the freebies, scanning 4.5GB worth of files in an average of 2 minutes, 25 seconds. Free products, by comparison, completed the same test in an average of 2 minutes, 44 seconds.
Free and paid products were nearly neck and neck in the on-access scan tests, which show how quickly the software can scan files for malware when they're opened or saved to disk. Using the same 4.5GB of files, free products completed the on-access scan test in an average time of 4 minutes, 50 seconds. Their paid counterparts completed the test 8 seconds later.
Scan speeds, however, are a mixed bag. In our on-demand scan tests, paid antivirus programs edged out the freebies, scanning 4.5GB worth of files in an average of 2 minutes, 25 seconds. Free products, by comparison, completed the same test in an average of 2 minutes, 44 seconds.
Free and paid products were nearly neck and neck in the on-access scan tests, which show how quickly the software can scan files for malware when they're opened or saved to disk. Using the same 4.5GB of files, free products completed the on-access scan test in an average time of 4 minutes, 50 seconds. Their paid counterparts completed the test 8 seconds later.
Joined: May 2011
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From: Maryland
I'm sorry, but I am going to have to disagree with VPS.
AVG and Avast are garbage too, I can't believe it's being recommended in here. The only free antivirus that people should be using right now is Microsoft Security Essentials. It works flawless on Vista/7 machines. I've heard it can be a little finicky for some people on XP but on my old laptop running XP at home it works perfect.
Also, Windows XP is perfectly fine for Metros if he is happy with it. Saying "XP is the worst operating system" immediately discredits anything you will ever say about computers in here, I'm sorry.
Both Firefox and Chrome are great browsers and I would recommend whichever one is more comfortable to you. Download both of them and see what you like. I personally love Firefox and all the extensions and add-ons it has but Chrome has new ones coming out everyday.
AVG and Avast are garbage too, I can't believe it's being recommended in here. The only free antivirus that people should be using right now is Microsoft Security Essentials. It works flawless on Vista/7 machines. I've heard it can be a little finicky for some people on XP but on my old laptop running XP at home it works perfect.
Also, Windows XP is perfectly fine for Metros if he is happy with it. Saying "XP is the worst operating system" immediately discredits anything you will ever say about computers in here, I'm sorry.
Both Firefox and Chrome are great browsers and I would recommend whichever one is more comfortable to you. Download both of them and see what you like. I personally love Firefox and all the extensions and add-ons it has but Chrome has new ones coming out everyday.