Antivirus Software

THe most popular and probably most recommended AV software ( I use it for my stand alone and MANY of my customers use it) is AVG Free edition.

FREE edition simply doesn't come with user support, although the FAQ's will help if needed.

1) It is VERY resourceful and doesn't impede performance as Norton and MacAffee do.

2) It is thorough and effective

3) Well, it's free of course, the nice little outgoing message signature saying that the email is virus free is always nice for someone's inbox too.

Downlaod it at: http://www.lavasoft.nu

I cannot even begin to count the number of phone calls I've received, after removing Norton and installing AVG, just to thank me for the change.

Anti-virus tools will only stop the viruses that are in their tables. Even if you have a live update capability, which they all have, some viruses are brand new and the vendor has not identified them yet.

So in theory, any product will occasionally let a virus through. There is no difference between the products by that measure.

Since most viruses are spread via e-mail attachments, your best protection against new viruses that your anti-virus won't stop is to be very careful when deciding to open an attachment. It is no longer good enough to be sure that you know the sender. The sender's e-mail address could be "spoofed" by a hacker so that the e-mail appears to be from someone you know but is not really. E-mail software has the capability of showing us the real sender, it just doesn't do it. Hopefully that defect will be improved very soon.

But even if the e-mail really is from who you think it's from, do you have any guarantee that your friend's computer, or even your spouse's computer, does not have a virus?

There's no reason that viruses cannot be spread by cookies and spyware, artifacts which are used by many popular, trusted websites. Your anti-virus software does not check the message traffic between your computer and the websites you visit; the volume is too great, it would probably make your internet connection visibly slow down. All you can do is virus-scan your entire computer frequently, using the latest updates from the vendor of all the viruses that are known at the time of the last update.

Therefore the most important criterion in choosing anti-virus software is how quickly the vendor reacts to new viruses and updates the tables in your computer. By that measure I believe that there is no significant difference between the vendors. They all get their information from the same sources.

So if you find one easier to use, or more compatible with your system, get it. I personally find Norton and McAfee virtually identical in ease of use, so I use Norton because I was able to acquire it a little more cheaply. I very much doubt that it does a better job than its competitors. I don't know anything about PC-cillin.

Allow me to jump on the band wagon for AVG. I have used it for over a year now, works VERY well. Caught one bug while using it and a combination of Ad-Aware, Spyware Guard and Spybot S&D got it. And have kept everything else out. Including things the others didn?t catch. Best of all as mentioned by Oz_Media, they are all free and do a better in my experience than the name brands. Just my two cents worth.