OT, But you Guys Come Up With Answers

Our PC Virus program expired (Trend Micro PC-Cillin) they want $76.00 for a year renewal, just to darn much! E-Bay has them a lot less, will they work or can I down-load something just as good with-out the high cost! Thanks

its expensive to buy, but if you dont have it, just wait untill the computer guy has to spend 2 days de bugging your system, due to all the viruses the are out there, [ teeny boppers?] its cheap compared to what that cost, [ guess how i know] now i got norton , adaware, spy bot and somethin else all in this thing

AVG free..ver 8.0 Just out is great and free.
Its large, some thing like 42 meg download, and kind of scared me but it is OK.
No taking over the whole computer and I like it better than the old free ver that has expired.
KennyP

There is no free lunch - you generally get what you pay for. Some of the cheap ones are probably OK but they may not have enough programmers to keep up with new threats daily so you have to watch out. Norton and McAfee have huge staffs and issue updates almost every day.

Now, IF you have your installation media for Windoze or whatever OS you are using, and IF you know how to reinstall/rebuild your machine, then don't fool with the anit-virus. I don't fool with it and my machine runs faster and I don't pay the fees - but I know how to rebuild it, too and in fact just did that a couple of months ago because i got bit. BTW - the culprits are probably not teenyboppers as someone said - it is more likely the Islamists or the Chinese. The Islamists got me and gave me Arabic wallpaper as a hint.

What the other poster said about the cost of having someone else fix it is right on - but if you can reinstall it yourself then go ahead and save the dough.

Norton Antivirus 2008 is 39.00 at Staples and Walmart. It works good and will not slow the computer like the older versions. I have used NAV for years without any problems or viruses.

old bc

I don't use anything. I haven't for a couple of years. No problems. But I don't download much either.

Beware of McAfee, It locked up one computer I had. Bad situation, I was trying to protect my computer, but installing McA, killed it. I lost a lot of files and pics that cannot be replaced..

AVG free Have used it for years no problems!

AVG free. ver 8 and AVG anti-spyware, no problems so far.And it"s the right price.

AVG works for me. I like the price too.

I've been using Avira Antivir. Haven't had any viruses in months. DO NOT get Norton. Total waste of money. It slows down the computer and doesn't work. If your computer does get a virus but is still usable save any files you want to keep and take it in to a pro. Have them take the OS off and reinstall it off the Windows disc again.(You should have gotten this with the computer)

Wife put McAfee on this putor and it has never been anything but trouble. Can't get rid of them. New computor shop opened here in a Walmart a few weeks ago and talked to then and as soon os we can find time and money will take it in and they will clean out all the garbage and McCaffe and hopefully it will work better. They said there are several good free ones so will let them decide if to put one in or not.

I used to use AVG, but Avast seems a bit easier to use, and same price.

Norton is terrible, takes over your computer.

McAfee I got into issues with their billing practices.

--->Paul

I installed Norton 360, and it was WAY overkill. Like someone else said, it took over my whole computer. I un-installed it as fast as I had installed it.

Just got a new computer several days ago and don't have anything on it yet except pop-ups saying it's unprotected. I bought Trend Micro, but haven't installed it yet. The salesman at Best Buy said it's what they recommend for all their new computers. He said it's simple and all you need. Price was $19.99.

I bought Defender Pro from Walmart a month ago, and it basically destroyed my computer. It took almost a week, six e-mails, and a two hour telephone conversation with a Defender Pro techie to get rid of it all. During the conversation, the techie admitted Defender Pro 2008 is NOT compatible with some of MS's latest updates.

By coincidence, or not by coincidence, two days later the hard drive in the computer went kaput. I had a new hard drive installed, but it just wasn't the same. Ergo, the new computer. I'll relegate my old one to my shop for work orders, etc. when I do customer work.

i have been using NOD32. i was told to use by a programmer at a very large bankin firm. it cost 27 dollars to renew, 35 if new. havent had a bit of trouble since then. that is what the bankin firm uses. i am using their home edition though.
norton sucks, the only 2 viruses i ever got attacked norton first, all heck broke loose after it was shut down.
just my 2 cents worth
johndeeregene

Get rid of Microsoft and install Ubuntu. For a good solid everyday web, email computer that op system works great and it"s free. It does everything fine except play some video clips. Just haven"t found the right free software for that yet.
On another note I just completed a 2 year test with my other laptop.. no virus protection for the 2 year period. I then installed McAfee and it reported no viruses or anything else. So I have 1 laptop with Ubuntu which I use for most everyday use and my company Microsoft door stop for work stuff.

If all you do is play on the web and get email, switch operating systems. Linux (Mint, ubuntu, pclinuxos, red hat fedora, novell suse, etc.) and the bsds (pcbsd, desktopbsd, freebsd, netbsd, etc) don"t have virus problems and are used by the some of the biggest corporations in the world(ibm, google, yahoo, etc). Dell, lenovo, and even wallmart(website) sell machines with linux installed. Many have live cds that allow you to try to operating system out before you install. Backup your machine (if you"re going to install), download an iso of your choice and burnit to a cd. Reboot and see what a fast operating system is like. Especially on older computers (>5 years). For the curious, Distrowatch.com carries reviews and tracks popularity of the various oses. Of course you could get a mac(osx is freebsd under the hood). If you still need windows for certain things(games, specific hardware) you can dual boot your machine or run windows programs under emulation. I"ve used linux for over a decade with no data loss or even an os failure. The server alone ran from 1998 to 2004 when the tornados hit the house, its still running today with all the data still on it from 1998 and accumulated since. I"ve been using linux on the desktop for over a decade with no virus problems, and I don"t just surf the net and get email with my rigs.





I"m sorry if this seems like an ad. It"s not. I"m just tired of people having to spend good money(that they may need) on problems that already have a practical cure for free. That"s with these troubled times anyway.
For those interested, Mint is currently rated as the easiest for linux and pcbsd for the bsds.

Nice to see someone else going the better route. What players have you tried?

I dunno... I don't really use anything. This machine has Norton 360 installed on it and it's disabled and neutered 99% of the time. It has to be or else it's a bigger virus than anything else out there. Something like the cure being worse than the disease....
The last scan engine I used on any regular basis was McAfee 2.5.1. That was 10 years ago when I was still in college and connected to a campus network. Of the virus scanners that I've used it was about the only one that was ever any good, and even McAfee went to hell very early on in the 3.x series engines....
I don't know what's out there today but I do know that Norton is not the answer. It was a virus 10 years ago and it's worse today.
Linux may be a good option for an operating system if you're handy around operating systems, but it's not for everyone. Unless it's a lot more user friendly than it was, it would not be hard to get in a heap of trouble... There again, it's 10 years since I did much with it, granted it is a very powerful, efficient OS.

Rod

used mcafee for a long time and then had problems with computer not mcafee. The tech put on AVG and I will keep using it, this was almost 2 years ago and I just put it on my new laptop. Also run ad-aware every couple weeks. I was also told to get away for internet explorer, I have been using Firefox for the same time frame.

If it"s been that long, you might want to download a livecd version of one of the distros and boot it up off you cd-rom drive, that way you don"t have to alter your machine by doing an installation. It"s definitely changed a lot in ten years. From slackware"s warning "This operating system is for programmers" in 1994 to the mantra of "ubuntu" -- it essentially means software for everyone everywhere in this context -- since 2003. Linux now auto-detects most hardware and xwindows auto-configs itself. There are also several graphical environments(gnome, kde, xfce, etc) available pre-configured that are mature and stable. Plus with over 20,000 applications (install and go) in just the standard repository (ex:debians) and many other repositories available there"s very little not covered in some way. Even some commercial games are written with linux in mind now.