Weaver

If you absolutely must use a ‘name-brand’ scanner, then Norton is the only way to go.
And you can get it from Savon Soft for less than $15.
I can vouch for Savon Soft, as I bought both Nero 6 and Systemworks 2003 from them.

Still, I recommend going with AVG.

Originally posted by Foo Fighter
Off-topic: I think more security responsibility should shift to ISPs. If my email was “pre-scanned” by more POP servers, we wouldn’t have so many mass infections spread so quickly. But that’s another topic.

Actually, I’m opposed to this….because some ISPs are already doing this (in combination of blocking and deleting messages in the name of anti-SPAM).

Got an angry relative that wanted to visit me last summer, but though I was ignoring his Emails…..only I never got any emails from him.

I didn’t find out until I discovered that it was my Email service provider that was making it difficult for me to properly conduct eBay transactions….

My current provider just marks messages as SPAM, but as far as I know it doesn’t block them…though it does delete some of the attachments on my emails. They did mark an important email recently as SPAM, but I forget what it was now….

The Dreamer.

Originally posted by ChrisSpera
[B]What idiotic activation schemes? What problems are you seeing?

I was considering upgrading to NAV (Symantec…its the same thing) 2004. What problems are you bumping into that make it a concern?

Christopher [/B]

I heard about all 2004 products will use product activation…which means in combination with the unit product key you get for the software, it combines it with a hardware id based on various bits in your computer….similiar to Windows XP’s product activiation.

Causes problems if you reformat your drive, change a substantial amount of your hardware or upgrade computers.

They’ve actually already been testing the product activation with some of their 2003 products.

But, it looks like they didn’t use the scheme that Intuit used last year with TurboTax…

My new computer comes with 2003 preinstalled…wonder if it is affected by this change. My last new computer had 2002, I can’t think of any reason not to just keep renewing its subscription each year.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with my future computer systems…though I keep saying the next one is going to be a Mac (one of the guys in sales keeps bugging me to do an unauthorized port of our software to the Mac….:cool: ) But, the next machine (or 2) I’ll be building will probably run Linux….haven’t decided on the distro yet though.

Though it means I have a purchased copy of 2002 that I won’t be using….(though its service runs out next month).

The Dreamer.

Originally posted by dgallina
[B]The idiotic activation schemes in the new version Symantec consumer products is seriously annoying, however. Making me seriously consider switching…

Diego [/B]

What idiotic activation schemes? What problems are you seeing?

I was considering upgrading to NAV (Symantec…its the same thing) 2004. What problems are you bumping into that make it a concern?

Christopher

I use NAV on my windows machines, along with keeping them constantly up to date with Microsoft patches.

The idiotic activation schemes in the new version Symantec consumer products is seriously annoying, however. Making me seriously consider switching…

Diego

I am starting with Sophos. I just downloaded the trial, and then I am going to give NAV, Symantec, and AVG.

Thanks for your help!!
Judie :0)

I’ve used others before, but they tend to slow down my system. AVG does the job very good sofar.

Originally posted by Altema
…Unless you have a cable connection or sensitive info, or do not stay up on your patches every week.

I agree. I’ve got a broadband connection and I’d feel nekked without NAV.

My Linksys Cable DSL Router based firewall helps some… but still, this is protection I don’t think anyone can do wihtout.

You will also need an AV Scanner if you use a lot of removable media. You don’t necessarily know where that floppy or CD has been…

Kind Regards,

Christopher Spera

Originally posted by bitbank
[B]I’ve found that with virus scanners the cure is worse than the disease. Unless you run software from unknown sources and open all email attachments, I would not worry about virus protection.

L.B. [/B]

…Unless you have a cable connection or sensitive info, or do not stay up on your patches every week. Our corp is still recovering from the last two virus attacks. My wife’s laptop was down for two weeks while we hunted down my AV disk, as it could not maintain a connection long enough to download an update. Blaster did not require email being opened or an application being run; it targeted a vunerable port on any internet connected device, then if it sucessfully invaded, it located other hosts by ICMP pings and attempted to spread.

For my own laptop, I use McAfee but keep it turned off unless there is a threat coming because I keep the device updated regularly. I stuck with McAfee because I breezed through the last few hits (especially sobig and msblast) with out incident, while our Trend equipped devices got slammed. Here it is two months later and we still have almost 100 devices infected that Trend can’t handle.

The fourth is an old 300MHz laptop that I don’t use very often, mainly use it for network sniffing…..

For that one, I just installed AntiVir Personal Edition (which is free for private/individual use)

http://www.free-av.com/

My other machines run Linux….no AV software on there, but one of them has several shared directories. Plan to turn my old PC into another Linux box after I finish moving everything off of it.

Right now I have a spot in my computer room for it, but I was thinking of parking it on my Living Room LAN segment…so I would be on the local 100BaseT segment for DVArchive with my ReplayTVs. The Living Room and Computer Room are connected by a 802.11b bridge….so it is kind of slow.

Of course, I was also thinking of getting a separate DSL subscription for the Living Room. Of course, if I do that, I’ll need a ‘server’ to handle tasks for that gateway.

The Dreamer.

Of course, firing up Eudora and having it poll all my different Email accounts at the same time can be a pretty stressful thing for NAV….I have so many email accounts, that I can’t recall off hand how many ‘all’ is. :rolleyes:

I just noticed that the subscription for one of my machines runs out in a month….good thing I’m replacing it with a new machine, bad that the new machine only comes with a 3 month subscription….

Of course, I didn’t want to try reinstall the old NAV on the new computer. The old NAV is such that you have to install it on a virgin W2K box and then update it, before you can apply any service packs and/or hotfixes. Otherwise it kills the OS. Of course, it was the older of the three machines I have.

Meanwhile…the new machine arrived last night…so I’m hunting around for original CDs so I can reinstall all the important stuff….seems I’m missing the CDs for my Canon Powershot S20 (the main thing I would miss is the PhotoStitch….and being able to sync the clock with my PCs clock….but now that I wear a mechanical watch…exact time isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be )

And, this morning my new iPod arrived….have it charged up, but no tunes on it yet….that will have to wait until I finish setting up the new computer (and have everything migrated over)

It is going to be a sleepless weekend for me….:cool:

The Dreamer

L.B.

AV Scanners are all about the same now adays, IMHO. I like NAV. I’ve got it on just about every PC that I own.

IMHO, its a bit more graceful and eloquent (sp?) at what it does; HOWEVER, before we uncork the flame juice and start spewing it all over everything, a good AV Scanner should do the following:

1. Scan all incoming IP traffic and mail
2. Scan all outgoing IP traffic and mail
3. Automatically upate both definition and engine components (so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to do that)

Everything else is gravy. A scanner that can’t or doesn’t do these things is either out dated or not worth your money. Both McAfee and Symantec AV do all of these things. Both are close in price.

The best suggestion I can give you is: Pick one. Pick one and keep it updated. If you lapse your subscription, like you did, renew it as soon as you can.

Hope this helps!

Kind Regards,

Christopher Spera