Anybody know anything about antivirus s/w?
 

My mothernlaw bought a new computer and it came with a Norton 60 day trial. I have Macs so I no nothing about this stuff. Is Norton a good program? Is there something better on the market? I stop using PCs long ago so totally out of touch with this Microsoft stuff.

Nothing is 100% when it comes to blocking the millions if not billions or trillions of harmful things that can infect your machine, but having a decent security program does help. I personally used Microsoft Security Essentials for a long time and never had a problem with it. It is free from Microsoft and is a pretty easy to use and light program. The only thing is when it is doing a scan it can be a bit taxing on the CPU and system resources.

I have since moved to using the free Avast AntiVirus for home. You have to register to get your key to activate the program but it is all free. Works well and has a few more features then MSE. Of course Norton has received a lot of 4.5 and 4 stars out of 5 in a lot of reviews and some good praise from a lot of tech sites so it may be worth it to you to get that. However paid and name brand is not always the best. It's really personal preference but also having some common sense when surfing the Internet, downloading attachments from unknown emails and installing unknown programs is the best antivirus.

its the spam, malware and spyware she'd probably be most apt to get in trouble with. She's 82 and an internet and email user. I'll check out MSE sounds like it may be all she needs.

+1 on the Microsoft Security Essentials. Gets the job done w/ minimal hassles.

Malwarebytes is free and awesome...get it in addition to an anti-virus and you're golden

AVG or Avast are good. Right now I have AVG, superantimalware, malwarebytes, and something else running.

I use avast and have never had a single issue. Well, except for the annoying voice that tells me every time it updates, which is often. Especially when I have had my laptop hooked up to my stereo and forget to turn down the volume, and all of a sudden I hear this womens voice yelling at me
"AVAST ANTI-VIRUS HAS UPDATED"
and startles the living dookie out of me.

Another +1 for Microsoft Security Essentials, I find most other antivirus programs to be obtrusive and resource heavy, but MSE is a very good program.

I've used AVG for years, had to use Malwarebytes to clear one thing which AVG couldn't a few years back. But otherwise, all good.

Though sadly it does seem to be getting more and more bloated, well, or my computer is just showing it's age.

And another +1

Yes.
Add another "plus."

AVG isn't bad either, but as also suggested above, it seems to be getting a little bloated as of late. And they try to sneak in web tool bars and what-not when it updates versions, FYI (easy to avoid if you watch for the check boxes).

I do horrible things on the computer and have for some time. I am ok with this. M−bytes is awesome and ccleaner is def worth having, as it is also free.

I have found Kaspersky is well worth the price of admission!!! It has kept me clean for years. I buy the three pc package and hand out the other two to friends. I actually have one left, pm me and I can throw you my last code. It is good for 2 years

Edit: And Norton is Terrible

I have also found that the anti−virus program is not taking all crazy resources to run, but their full internet security suite will slow you to a crawl and does nothing for you.

I use Avira, works very well for me, plus Malwarebytes, good to have both. Also use ccleaner to clean up the registry every so often.

I would avoid Norton at all costs as well as McAfee, both cause more problems than they solve.

I've stopped using antivirus programs. In my opinion they're unnecessary. I use off-site email (Hotmail, Google Mail), and I never, ever open attachments from anyone I don't know. However, I do have a firewall (Zone Alarm), and spyware software (Superantispyware, Malwarebytes, Ad-Aware) which I run regularly. I'm far more worried about credit card information leaking out than viruses coming in!


Like I said, this is just my opinion. No flaming please!

:hiding:

To be fair, I heard McAfee finally killed something a few months ago :hiding:

You can actually disable the sounds and notifications in Avast in the settings. I was sure to do so because it is annoying and I just set it to auto update every 60 minutes. Also Avast is good about letting you scheduled quick and full system scans. I run a quick scan every Wednesday at 8pm and a full system scan every Sunday at 8pm.

MSE will probably be all she needs, it is probably one of the minimalist and easy to use user interfaces as well. I never had a problem with MSE when I used it. Malwarebytes is a great program for removing malware and spyware crap. CCleaner is great for removing junk files off your machine and also cleaning up registry errors and junk registry entries. All free.

Of course as I said before common sense is the biggest player with safe computing.

especially when its 2am and your watching pr0n on the down low trying not to wake up the misses