Free Zone Alarm, Free AVG, and Free Ad-Aware

Norton is evil!! I once tried to install it and the fecker crashed my computer for agessss.

So I broke the CD in half and threw it out the window. It made me feel better for 0.15 seconds.

 

Norton's probably the biggest memory hog I've ever had on a computer, although it was a couple years ago. Memory was somewhat low as it was, and installing Norton AV made things painfully slow.

Right now, I use avast!, a nice free little scanner. I used to use AVG, but we got a couple computers infected. A new virus came out, and AVG was unfortunately one of the last to provide an update, so since I was reformatting anyway, I thought I'd give avast! a try. So far, it's been good.

 

use ad aware and avg only...

 

i have zonealarm and spybot SD

 

LOL, were you able to break the CD in two halves, cause every time i try it just scatters around is bits and pieces.

 

is zone alarm good??? it is recommended?

 

Yes to both questions. IMO, it's the best of the freeware firewalls.

 

If you have a Linksys router does that have a firewall built in? And, does that mean that a software firewall like Zonealarm would be redundant?

 

No that's a good thing.

From what i have read on this topic i can say hardware firewalls are good for protecting you from attacks from the internet TO your computer but for connections from your computer TO the internet it's doesn't do such a good job. And this is just as important.

And software firewalls perform much better at this and especially Zonealarm from a recent test i have read on firewalls.

 

I don't think most routers include a hardware firewall, do they?

 

Yes. Broadband routers have at least some firewalling capabilities built in. All broadband routers on the market today are at least capable of doing Network Address Translation (NAT), which affords a certain level of protection.

 

There you go - I just learned something. Thanks!

 

I use AVG, Firefox, Microsoft Anti-Spyware. The only firewall I use is the Windows Firewall. It is good enough.

 

No, really it isn't. It is at best one-way protection. ZoneAlarm is free. There are other free ones like Sygate if you don't like ZoneAlarm for some reason. Do yourself a favor and get a real firewall.

 

No problem


I use ESET NOD32 which has got to be the best antivirus I have ever used and I have used every major competitor. It's not free but I highly suggest it

 

What can NOD32 do that Free AVG can't?

 

It's better to ask why AVG Free isn't any good.

Check out this interview with a Botnet owner from which you can see how he thinks of it.

The strenght of a good AV product is the speed of signature updates combined with the heuristic capabilties and the team that stands behind it.

Something AVG performs poorly in.

 

hey dude! can you tell its mb or gb? thanks!

 

That's one opinion. I think there are many people who have used AVG (and SAFELY) for years who would strongly disagree with it.

All AV programs have strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has his favorite and his "pet peeve". Personally, I hate McAfee because of its frequent false positives which I think is dangerous - after a while, one tends to think, "oh it's probably safe - it's probably just McAfee overreacting again" and as soon as you hit that point you might as well uninstall it... but I have good friends who are very knowledgeable who wouldn't use anything else.

Look around at other opinions (here's one from PCWorld), try a few, and make up your own mind.

 

I agree with minstrel, i have used AVG and i am satisfied.

I have a machine running for past 2 years, wthout any crashes and never formatted, i am using AVG on it.