So its almost time to send the kids back to school. Some to high school, and some to college. And guess what, they are begging for a computer, or they are taking the family computer to school and you need to know what they need. Or perhaps maybe you have had problems with security in previous years, and you don't want to have them any more. Well you have come to the right place. In this muti-part series I am going to talk about what you need, the must haves for computer for school, or even for just having a computer. In this part I am going to discuss anti-virus. I was talking to a friend of mine earlier today, and she told me that her antivirus software was telling her it couldn't run because, it is missing something. She had this problem in the past and simply uninstalled and reinstalled the software. This normally fixed it, now it isn't working. This is a major brand antivirus software. I have stopped recommending the two major players in the consumer antivirus market in favor of a smaller company, with what I think to be a very good product. But, I am not endorsing any antivirus software, instead I am going to give you things to look for, and where to research the options. First you want to make sure that the antivirus software is certified by the
ICSA Labs. There lists of antivirus tested is updated weekly along with the full lab reports. You only want to choose certified antivirus software. You also want to check out the virus bulletin. Their
VB100% Award Site shows all of the antivirus software packages that have meet their criteria which include detecting all virus currently in the wild and never producing a false positive. A subscription may be required however, I do believe it is free. Now I said I wasn't going to make product recommendations, however I am going to give my reasoning as to why I don't recommend the two major players, Norton and McAfee. They are bloated. They take up a lot of system resources. So, if you are running a laptop that, say shares RAM with video card, they can slow you down, so I don't like them. The other reason is they are well know, which means that the people who make virus know how to cirumvent them, and that is a very, very bad thing. I plainly recommend that anyone with a Windows computer get antivirus software, you just can't live without it. Next week, for those going back to college, and those at home, spyware how to get rid of it and how to stop it.
