A major part of the computing experience circa 2003

Symantec is offering a rebate on their antivirus scan program, Norton's. Slashdot posted an article yesterday where some antivirus software company is offering their software to home users at no cost for one year. Grisoft's AVG antivirus scanner has been free for years and is still the program used at the Beach House. It has never failed me. I update every 3 days and scan once a day. If you just have to spend money most folks like Norton's Anti-Virus. But Great Googly Moogly!, don't get Norton's Internet Security!! It's a package that has different tools for online protection including the virus scan software and it is horrible. I've seen it wreak havoc on a network. It is extremely hard to uninstall and seems to cause more problems than all the web evils put together. Purchase JUST the antivirus program! If you are running McAfee, please don't ask me to work on your unprotected machine. Don't even bring it into my yard. How does this horrible company stay in business? Kevin Rose, TechTV guru, likes their firewall. I use ZoneAlarm; it's free and does a great job. No McAfee for me.

AVG? Click on the link listed on this site and download the free version. Be sure and give them a valid email address because they will send you a code to activate the product. When installing just use the defaults and let it finish. Be sure to restart. Let it update if needed. Let it scan. Have trusty floppies on hand and make disk/disks. Now do a few tweaks.

Find the update manager and change it from the default setting of every 14 days to no more than 3 days. While there on the Update Manager page uncheck the user confirms dial up box so it can check for updates when you are away from the computer. Then schedule AVG to run every day. Now here's the real trick. Always make sure your virus definitions are up to date. Let's say you use a laptop and it has been in the trunk all week (absolutely won't mistreat mine that way). When you finally get it out and online, go immediately to the Update Manager tab and make it manually update. Then run a full scan. If you haphazardly get on the web without doing this then your chances for infection go off the scale.

Remember having an anti-virus scan program on your computer is not worth a plug nickel if the definitions are not up to date. I don't care if you live BF, Egypt, and can only sign on at 9600k, DO THE VIRUS DEFINITIONS UPDATE! Symantec thru SARC has a wonderful site that really helps when recovering from a virus infection. These tools are powerful and are designed for power users. If you don't know what your doing seek help. Hat's off to them for making this available. They blow Grisoft (AVG) away concerning online support, but Grisoft is a European company and they do provide us with free protection. Just update those definitions in any and every case. It'll make your personal confuser happy.


"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
-Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)