Comments on: The Only Thing Worse Than Viruses…

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:55:35 +0000

Bulbboy: The former.

By: Bulbboy

Bulbboy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:13:54 +0000

Can a small/medium/large business be run totally with Macs, or are pcs an necessary evil, Mike?

By: Schmitter

Schmitter — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:50:30 +0000

My computer also slowed down to a crawl. I added ram and began eliminating any useless program/file I could find. I have never had a virus so I got rid of my original Mcaffee. My computer is 10 years old and still running ion the original W98 install. It runs pretty fast now.

By: James

James — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:02:00 +0000

Great post! I personally dumped all anti virus software on my PC for the last 6 yrs! I used to have to format and re-install every 3-6 mths, regular crashes, slow as a dog. After my computer science degree I had a dig to see what these anti virus (like norton) was actually doing, my findings were disturbing, in that they still use a basic signature hash to scan files by, any single byte change will throw off the scanner. All viruses (which actually wernt) it did not fix, it actually did nothing! oh i have a virus, i wont tell you where it is or how to fix it, ill just ‘quantine’ it and leave it sitting there. There were alot of issues I found with them, least the fact norton root kits! your bloody install, apparently to do a boot sector virus check, my ass. Since doing a clean instal without any anti virus I have never had a single crash, blue screen, I havnt formatted in over 4yrs! If you know what your doing, dont open stupid attachments, use firefox, destroy IE and outlook/express, and your free! Anti virus is simply playing with peoples fear, and they make alot of subscription $$ from doing absolutely nothing, people fear what they dont understand.

By: joke a bloke

joke a bloke — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:12:35 +0000

Um, oops. I forgot AVG was running a deep scan and may have affected data transfer, so maybe mikeindustries.com isn’t one of the offenders that bugs me so. Certainly wasn’t trying to convey that attitude but reading my post above? Boy, it’s time to chill. No wonder I recently set AVG to start deep scans at 6 pm. Makes me get up after a 12-hour day and exercise.

By: joke a bloke

joke a bloke — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:07:49 +0000

Also, over the last three years, I’ve tried all the “pay for” anti-virus apps and internet security suites. I’m now using AVG Free and Microsoft’s own firewall, my computer has never run as well!

What bothers me nowadays is all of the apps constantly calling home. My hard drive is always spinning. Just as bad are the websites that never ever stop loading a page. Right now, mikeindustries.com is still transferring data on my machine and my hard drive is spinning… it’s been five minutes. WTH is this?! Crap like that infuriates me. The ISS programs never stopped this either.

By: joke a bloke

joke a bloke — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 01:02:15 +0000

I ran into this “ad” business about four years ago. Images or server calls with “banner” in them were also affected. I long ago stopped using any terms related to advertising or anything that makes me think spam. Yes, very maddening. Glad somebody else with a larger reach is getting the word out there.

By: Riley

Riley — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:16:41 +0000

My experience with AVG, on both XP and Vista machines, has been generally good. I’ve had nothing but problems with the ‘home’ versions of Symantec, CA and McAfee products, which always seem to slow down otherwise zippy systems. Surprisingly, my experience with Symantec Enterprise has been good (knock on wood).

Using a restore point as a substitute for anti-virus software is a bit risky for many reasons: 1) not all viruses are removed by a system restore. 2) not all viruses cause their host machine to show obvious signs of infection and it may be difficult for the user to know they have a virus. 3) shared/multi-user machines – it isn’t wise to trust the habits of another computer user. And so on…

As someone who uses Mac at home and Windows at work, I’m curious to see how Mac viruses/threats evolve as Mac market share increases. Hopefully, Apple stays ahead of the game – as much as possible.

By: Jonathan Dobres

Jonathan Dobres — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:13:54 +0000

Put me down in the “pro” column for AVG Free. I switched to a Mac last year, but AVG served me extremely well in Windows. Unobtrusive, not annoying, low memory use, and no noticeable impact on my browsing.

Norton is a Mafia protection scheme in comparison.

By: Tom Salami

Tom Salami — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:37:26 +0000

A family member complained to me bitterly for weeks about an Outlook problem. Her outbound emails sometimes arrived hours late, and she had to babysit her laptop to make sure that emails went through. Finally she was able to give me an error message from Outlook. It turns out that the Norton AV was somehow delaying outbound messages to the point that SMTP was timing out. Worse, this seems to be intentional! I don’t recall the error message exactly but in effect it said, “upgrade your Norton AV to make this stop.” I uninstalled Norton and of course the problem never reoccurred.

Norton has devolved into something odious.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:40:36 +0000

I was a long time user of AVG until they released version 8, which slowed my WinXP system to a crawl.

Switched to the free version of Avast! and have had no problems with it at all. My desktop is working much better, and I don’t get any false reports on websites I visit.

It seems some free AV programs are better (and less sleazy) than others.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:35:11 +0000

I prefer the smaller AV companies like eEye and their Blink software. Excellent customer support and a pretty solid program overall. Their personal edition lets you install and use for free for a year, and then you can decide to purchase for $25. That, in my opinion, is the best of both worlds.

By: Ray S

Ray S — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:23:04 +0000

AVG all the way. Consumer Reports rate these and Norton is near the bottom of the list. They have excellent article, it will save you a lot of grief.

By: Marix

Marix — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:15:18 +0000

Yea, you could roll back to a restore point to not worry about virii, but the virii can still infect the backups.
That’s when you use a pen drive or ext HD to store your backup.

By: Aaron Davies

Aaron Davies — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:57:15 +0000

Ah, CA, where good code goes to die….