Need Anti-virus Software? Try One of These
FYI, I use AVG; my wife uses Avast. I'm not suggesting you switch form whatever AV tool you're using. What you may consider, though, is when the license is about to expire, uninstall your current AV product and give one of these two a whirl.
Sorry to say, both products, like commercial products, have annoyances.
AVG makes it difficult to find the free version. (You can find it here.) And AVG won't automatically check for signature updates or perform a scan more than once a day. But you can do it manually anytime you need. If you want to update AVG program manually, right click on the AVG Control Center icon in the System tray and choose Check for update from Internet. For a full scan, open AVG and choose Complete test from the interface.
One annoying feature of Avast is their annoying pop obliquely telling you your license has expired. My sister got the popup, as did a buddy, and they were both confused.
"Hey, Bassman, Avast wants something and I'd like to know how to execute whatever it's asking us for. And we're not sure what it's asking us for...the note reads: An error has occurred while attempting to update! After clicking on it, all it says is the update failed because the license key for this product is invalid or expired."
It's really an easy fix -- if you know what to do. Just head for the Avast web site, register again, and you'll be sent a new license key by e-mail. You have to do it every year -- that's when the current key expires.
Kill Some Time
This is an easy Flash game (ha!). All you need to do is keep your cursor away from the little guy. If you can avoid him, cool, but don't let your guard down. He has an assortment of tools to grab your cursor. My highest score? I'm too embarrassed to say.
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Keep your cursor away from this guy... |
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I was looking for your recomondations in the anti-spyware and didn't notice that both the sites were for anti-virus. I already have an anti-virus and anti-spyware but I am always looking for another spyware program. I run 3 of the ones you recomend Adaware, Spybot S&D, and Microsoft's Anti-spyware. Thanks for any info but you should change the heading on your blog to read Anti-virus. I searched and can't find the Anti-spyware within the sites you recomended.
Oh, geez, what a typo. I'll fix it.
I use Kaspersky Anti-Hacker & Anti-virus because they came with Iolo's System Mechanic 6 Pro. I also use Ad-Aware Plus.
First, your article title is about anti-spyware yet the two programs you write about are anit-virus. I own a small company in WA doing systems integration, repair, upgrades, etc. I work on anti-virus/spyware/adware every day. What you are titling your article about is one thing almost completely different than a virus scanning program.
Second, no one program can clean an infected system of all the adware/spyware. So, writing an article like your leads people to incorrectly believe that one program can remove their adware/spyware infections, when neither of the two you mentioned do that.
Virus threats have become basically nuisance programs whereas adware/spyware are severely dangrous as most of the extremely negative ones come with some legit software.
Take for instance screensavers.com. IMHO it is a site set up to distribute adware and not screensavers. Yeah, it looks like it is there for screensavers, but in reality it is the furtile ground for distributing the adware which almost 100% of the time leads to spyware/adware, which leads to more spyware/adware and viruses being downloaded in the background.
No single computer that I scan has only viruses and no spyware/adware infected computer is infected with a single adware/spyware program and nearly zero have a way to remove their products easily.
The point is that all adware/spyware results in more being installed behind the scenes. This is not only unethical but probably illegal and there is no legitimate adware on the market because all of them stealth install nasty stuff without your knowledge.
Steve, you mentioned in the Anti-virus piece that AVG doesn't automatically check for signature updates. It sure does. It's in the scheduler and mine is set to check everyday and it does the job. It even tells you when new versions of AVG are available to download.
Steve: You tell us how good AVG AV is however, in the list of the top ten av programs AVG is listed as just good and is on the bottom of the list. Something isn't right here. I would like to hear your comments on this.
The AVG link goes nowhere ("This page cannot be displayed." - so are they now blocking URL since you say it is hard to find?
Joan, Copy & paste the link below.It should take you right to the AVG Free web site.
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5
Thanks Steve for your recommendations. I only just downloaded AVG after getting sick of Norton's yearly fee!
I was looking for some material that shows this anti-virus software is just as good as, or comparable to Norton/McAfee etc..So thanks very much for putting my mind at rest :)
I once used InnoculateIT and loved it but unfortunately I think they stopped distribution of it!!
Anyhow thanks again,
Alana
lol
To Mr. Siegel:
Indeed, AVG did come in at #10 but that's no shame. The authors of that test were dismayed by the program's 'clunky' interference (which, personally, I think is just fine) and that scan's couldn't be scheduled as often as desired. But it's important to note that AVG (just like all the other programs) caught all the viruses in the test file.