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

[Avery Ceo]

ClamWin is going to be your only open source option, and my Windows clients
and family have been very happy with it on their desktop machines.  Since
this is a laptop, though, it  is important to note that it does NOT do
on-access scanning - only scheduled scans.  If she doesn't have the
discipline to leave it running overnight once a week or to run the scans
manually, it won't help her.  Some people used to combine it with WinPooch
to hack together an on-access scan, but WinPooch has been unmaintained for a
few years now.

For a full OSS solution, you could install anacron through cygwin.  Avast
would be the simpler solution but, as you said, it is closed source.

Avery

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 10:19 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us>wrote:

> 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
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