[OT] anti-virus opins?

[Michael Hipp]

Ken Moffat wrote:
> Anyone have opinions on antivirus software for windows? Wife's office 
> uses MacAfee and Norton, both heavy on resources, and I've been hearing 
> good things about Panda being lighter and quite effective, as well as 
> more reasonable prices. Thoughts?

The best advice is to never, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason, 
under threat of violence, ever, neverevernever run McAfee or Norton. You 
wouldn't believe how many systems I see on a weekly basis where the complaint 
is the usual (slow, crashes a lot, etc.) and almost the entirety of the 
solution is to uninstall McAfee/Norton. They're junk. And the stupid vendors 
like Dell and most of the others insist on shipping their machines with this 
junk and constantly creating new generations of crack babies.

Panda seems to get high marks. I haven't used it. Kaspersky seems to 
consistently top the charts for detection rate. It may actually be the best 
out there.

I almost entirely use AVG. The free version: 
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5
It's lightweight and doesn't get in the way.

Thing to remember is that all these products are like putting a plastic 
padlock on a screen door. It'll certainly protect you from some number of 
threats but real "security" it ain't.

An excellent commercial package is Webroot Spy Sweeper. Fairly cheap and works 
well. It's about the only paid commercial package in this space I feel good 
about recommending.

HTH,
Michael