[ale] [OT] good FREE windisease anti-virus software

[Michael B. Trausch]

On 02/12/2010 09:43 PM, m-aaron-r wrote:
> Google shows up strong on ClamWin, and AVG shows up
> as a "free" closed source offering, but I'd be happy to be
> educated on the strengths of either as well as any other
> options out there.

AVG *used* to be good.  They have become craptacular in recent years, 
however, and cannot be soundly recommended anymore.

Avast and ClamWin are the ones that I hear Windows users talking about 
favorably that are free.  I've used both; Avast is closed-source and 
annoyingish to me, though some people are comforted by its daily "Virus 
Database Updated" sound clip.  ClamWin has always seemed to work well 
for me when I have put it in places, and it doesn't have any conditions 
on redistribution given its favorable license.

There is only one other really, _really_ important thing to remember 
with Windows:  no matter how many CPU cycles or how much RAM you devote 
to anti-virus, anti-malware software, and no matter how up-to-date it 
is, commercial or otherwise, the only true defense is prevention.  As 
the saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," and 
that's indeed the case.  And contrary to what many people seem to think, 
it's not anti-virus, anti-malware software that is the prevention.  It's 
the computer user him- or herself.  In the majority of cases, viruses 
and malware actually require assistance from the computer user to get on 
the thing in the first place.

Also, the utility of a monthly (or weekly!) full bit-for-bit image of a 
hard disk running Windows can not be underestimated.  Current versions 
of Windows create more than one partition at installation time, and 
systems that are sold with OEM copies of Windows tend to not come with 
recovery media anymore, instead opting to have the recovery media 
located in a partition on the hard drive (whether it is at the beginning 
or the end of the hard drive is dependent upon the vendor).  If you 
always have a recent image of the HD, you can save a lot of time when it 
comes to restoring from disaster.  After all, it is a *lot* easier to 
restore from a very recent full disk image than it is to reinstall 
Windows, find your data, restore that, do the several hours or days of 
updates (even on a 70Mbps connection it takes that long!) and then 
reinstall all the application software that you had in the first place. 
  I'll offer to tell Windows users how to do these sorts of things for 
themselves without charging a cent, but I tell them that if they do not 
want to do it themselves, I'll sell them the service to do it on a 
monthly basis.

Most Windows users I know think that they do not need such a service, 
and also don't think they need to do it.  They wind up paying more money 
in the long run on repairs than they would if they'd just do the proper 
maintenance tasks, or even better, stop going to questionable places on 
the Internet altogether---downloading software illegally and browsing 
pornography Web sites are the two largest sources of nasties on most 
computers I work on (even in offices).  Despite being told where the 
stuff is coming from, they fail to listen to my recommendations and then 
wind up calling me back, surprised that their system is full of crap again.

As an aside, I find that it is often possible to clean a system such 
that even without an install CD or backup to restore from.  It does, 
however, take a great deal of time and effort, and is far more expensive 
for me to do than it would be for people to just buy a new Windows 
license and reinstall from scratch.

	--- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                    Blog: http://mike.trausch.us/blog/
Tel: (404) 592-5746 x1                            Email: mike at trausch.us