[ccookie66]

Hello fellow people of A/S who drive Astro vans and/or Safari vans, but may also drive Saturns. :wave: For those of you who have Microsoft Windows, and use the antivirus Microsoft Security Essentials for their computers, may want to check out this article: http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-57 ... t-av-test/

I currently use MSE. I put it on all my computers. But according to that........I don't know. Just a heads up.

 

[Shad0wXCalibur]

I use AVG. A virus scanner alone isn't enough though. I like to use Malware bytes and Spybot for spyware/malware/adware/etc. I didnt use anything before because I know what I should and should not be doing but somehow, someway I couldnt figure out, I got some bad malware scam program that would pop up and lock my screen. Malware bytes was the only thing that got rid of it.

 

[ccookie66]

Hey do you use the latest version, right? AVG Free? Because I heard they used to slow down the computer pretty bad. I haven't used it recently, maybe they improved on the 2013 version.

 

[Big_kid]

Back in the day AVG slowed my stuff way down. Then again my old stuff was never that fast to begin with. We've got newer, better systems today, and Symantec seems to do well on them.

 

[Shad0wXCalibur]

It has a realtime scan that does tend to slow down file copies, zip extractions, etc. It has a temporary disable when I need to extract a big zip file. My computer is a 3.8 ghz quad-core with 16 gigs of ram and a solid state drive. Nothing slows down its normal use.

 

[Seb]

I loaded AVG 2013 free the other day. Its made my computer very slow. Seems to be a big drain on the memory and processor.

 

[Stroverlander]

On my notebook, Norton Internet Security subscription expired recently and after researching and reading installed the free Avast software, it ranked at the top in most of the reviews I read.

I've been happy with Avast, easy to fine tune setting and notifications and works seamlessly in the background. Doesn't slow notebook down when performing a full system scan either. Used to run AVG on work pc's and prefer Avast after using both. I still use Malwarebytes though I don't run it in the background, just perform a weekly scan.

Notebook is 2.00 GHz quad core w/ 8 GB ram and two 500 GB hdd's on Windows 7 64 bit. I'd like to swap to ssd's for a performance increase and use the hdd's for add'l backup and portable storage, someday...

 

[Shad0wXCalibur]

If your notebook drives are 7200 rpm, you actually wont notice a big difference to SSD. I didnt. But if you have 5400 rpm drives, then its a bigger difference. It also feels like my SSD isnt even as quick as it used to be brand new. Ive read that they do degrade over time. Maybe I should have gotten a 10,000 rpm raptor instead.

 

[Stroverlander]

Yeah, they are 5400. I've read about ssd degrading over time too but didn't think it was a major issue, good to know. I'm in no rush, the cost will only go down.

 

[Shad0wXCalibur]

You can have mine haha. I think I'll try a 10k raptor out.

Edit: I've disabled the real-time protection on my virus/malware scanners. That's the main thing that slows down some PC's. They run an automated scan once a week. That's good enough for me. Real-time scans make file extractions/copy and pastes/installs, etc slow. My PC seems to be back to it's full snappiness now.

 

[Stroverlander]

I'm good, computer upgrades are pretty low on the priority list right now. :blah:

 

[tedanderson]

It's been my experience that anti-virus programs do more harm than good in the way of productivity. At least in my case I think that because I am always working with specialized software that creates weird looking files, any type of AV program will register a bunch of "false-positives" and it will remove my file without my permission. :banghead:

Essentially you can avoid viruses, spyware, and malware if you don't use your computer as a "toy". Also, you can avoid all of that crap if you don't give your email address to 100 unknown companies every month.

If you are the type of person that's always going for the freebies and special offers, then get a 2nd computer and a 2nd email address for this purpose and use your main computer for all of the important stuff... like AS.com

 

[Shad0wXCalibur]

Im always careful. But somehow a moneypak fbi scam malware ended up on my PC. I cant figure out how. But got rid of it with malware bytes.

 

[ccookie66]

I was just using MSE on my Windows 7 Ultimate PC. I noticed it really started to slow things down, so just for the heck of it, I uninstalled MSE and installed AVG Free 2013. So far, its doing pretty good. I haven't noticed a slow down. Time will tell.