[RTC List] Choice of antivirus protection

[David C. Thewlis]

Chris,

For a number of years I used Norton AV although I became steadily more 
irritated and inconvenienced by their "antipiracy" practices.  Looked at 
McAfee but it looked like the same story again.  Several years ago I 
installed the free ZoneAlarm and liked it enough that I eventually 
bought the product version. About a year ago ZA and Norton wouldn't 
coexist (Norton being shirty) so I switched to the ZoneAlarm Security 
Suite and scrapped NAV.

After a year of constant problems I gave up on the ZA Security Suite.  
(Not least was the the AV component - actually the CA AV product - about 
every other attempt to update its antivirus settings failed and it took 
manual corrections to get everything working again).

I dropped ZoneAlarm, enabled the Windows Firewall on my desktop and 
laptop with the understanding that it provides _no outbound protection_ 
but I figured that was acceptable for at this point (I'm not running IE, 
Outlook or Outlook Express and I avoid Word if at all possible anyhow) 
ombies.  

Went looking for reviews of AV alternatives and wound up installing the 
free version of avast! which I have found quiet, unobtrusive, and 
effective.  http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html.  I will probably 
buy the professional version for the additional capabilities but so far 
I have been quite happy with the free version.

I also looked at the Yoggie Gatekeeper and the laptop USB-plugin 
firewall with the idea of using the Gatekeeper as a sort of cut-rate 
Barracuda box (and not bother with firewalls and AV on the LAN 
machines).  I have one each for testing and experimentation.  However 
I've been happy enough with avastthat I haven't wanted to put the time 
into it.

Dave Thewlis


CrawfordCA at aol.com wrote:
> Greetings all  ...
>  
> I'd like to start a thread about different choices for antivirus 
> protection on your Windows-based desktop or laptop computers. Long 
> ago, I used Norton (from Symantec), then I switched to McAfee for a 
> number of years, and now I'm looking for a better replacement.
>  
> To get things rolling, I wrote a blog posting on this topic in May 
> when I dumped McAfee and went shopping for substitute protection:
>  
> http://www.tsblogs.com/techblog/2008/05/shopping_for_antivirus_softwar.html
>  
> I am currently using a trial version of Microsoft's Live OneCare, that 
> has too many flaws to keep as a long term solution.
>  
> Any tips or recommendations are welcome, except for gratuitous 
> gloating over having chosen Mac or Linux over the evil empire 
> (Microsoft). Thanks for your consideration.
>  
> Chris Crawford
> www.justiceserved.com <http://www.justiceserved.com>
>
>
>
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-- 
*Dave Thewlis, DCTA Inc.*
+1 707 840 9391 (voice) · +1 707 498 2238 (mobile)
http://www.dcta.com · dthewlis at dcta.com <mailto:dthewlis at dcta.com>
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