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Johnny Dickshot Nov 27 2006 03:38 PM

My yearly shakedown from McAfee is coming and I'm wondering what my options are. IIRC, Mcafee charges me some $50 bucks a year for virus scan, firewall and some other junk, tho I supplement this with spybot (?), a free download which seems to dig up spyware pretty well and pretty often (including the thing embedded by McAfee which tells me when my firewall is disabled). I used to go also with Adaware, but they seem to have relegated me to a shitty level of "free support" and are forever begging me to upgrade. I also had a thing called PestPatrol at one time but it was such a royal PITA I destroyed it. I suppose you can never be too safe but I hate having these programs fighting for supremacy a la Quicktime vs. Windows Media Player v. RealPlayer allatime, they seem to wanna jam up my resources and speed, and on top of it all, I don;t really know how much I do need or don't need, whether they are just duplicating one another's responsibilities, and how much $$ I oughta be paying. So before I sink more ca$h into McAfee and/or download any more software, help me out: What do I need? What should I pay? What do you use? Is Panda/Norton, etc any better, or are there free programs that do the same crap?

metirish Nov 27 2006 03:42 PM

My boss who is also the IT expert for the department and builds computers in his spare time swears against spybots and all similar stuff,slows down the PC he says,he doesn't even have McAfee but told me to get it when I bought my new Dell,he says that's all you need. IIRC McAfee cost me $75 for the year.... Sorry,to answer your questions,stick with McAfee and get rid of the other junk,you don't need them..i had spybots on my old system and ended up getting a virus that killed the damn machine,AcAfee does a weekly scan and that owrks fine for me.

Methead Nov 27 2006 04:19 PM

I use Nod32 antivirus software. You can get a free 30-day trial here: http://www.eset.com/download/index.php I love it... uses very few system resources and it automatically updates itself constantly, up to 4-5 times a day. There's a yearly subscription, but I'm sure there are free antivirus programs out there too. I also use Spybot and Ad-Aware, running a scan whenever I remember.

Johnny Dickshot Nov 27 2006 05:38 PM

As it turns out, a lot of my confusion over mcafee relates to having purchased the software through Dell when I bought the PC. All my attempts to renew would offer their various products-- antivirus, firewall, spy, etc -- separately, and would not allow me to purchase the combined suite at once. That's actually a bad deal, since they were basically having me buy 3 peices of software at $30 a pop rtaher than the one including all 3 at $39. I discovered this in a 25 minute conversation with the macafee people by phone. Crooks.

KC Nov 27 2006 05:48 PM

I use a program that Pomposity guy gave me (developed by a former NASA dude for his ship's network) for my home network. He's rather proprietary about stuff, otherwise I'd share. At work, besides the normal mechanical firewall and network stuff, we just slap Norton Internet Security on everyone's machines. It catches stuff, it's gotten a lot less of a pain in the ass the last couple of years, and it's rated high in the PC rags.

RealityChuck Nov 27 2006 07:49 PM

Pay nothing. For antivirus, there's AVG, Antivir, Bitdefencer, and Avast! All free, all rated 100% (just like McAfee and the rest). For antivirus, there's Microsoft Defender. Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware are both good for cleaning. Spyware Blaster prevents most infections. See [url]http://www.siena.edu/antivirus/software/[/url] for links. AOL, of all people, also have put out a free antivirus/antispyware made by Kaspersky Labs, one of the top vendors. There are some issues -- AOL is using it to target ads, and it may mess up some systems -- but it might be worth a try (just remember to set a System Restore point). For a firewall, there's Zone Alarm. I have never paid for antivirus/antispyware. I currently used McAfee, but that's given to me as part of my ISP. You may want to check if your ISP has a similar deal.

Johnny Dickshot Nov 27 2006 08:33 PM

Thanks, too late. I have spybot and now Mcafee's suite.

metirish Nov 29 2006 07:04 PM

A few days ago I upgraded to internet explorer 7,has new security features and filtrers and stuff that I don't understand....works good though.

Rockin' Doc Nov 29 2006 08:34 PM

I just upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 this weekend. So far I like it. I like having a search window on the header (set Google as my default search)and being able to run multiple windows simultaneously within a single screen.

metirish Nov 29 2006 08:52 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Nov 30 2006 09:25 AM

I set google as the default search aswell,I love that there are no stupid tool bars anymore

RealityChuck Nov 30 2006 08:57 AM

I'm using MSIE 7 at home and it's very disappointing. Usually, when Microsoft cribs from another program, they improve it, but this is still inferior to Firefox (which had all the "new" features at least a year ago). The RSS feed feature is inconvenient -- it only let you know there are new items, but nothing about what they are (my RSS feed gives the title of the article without having to click). And, for some reason, they seemed to eliminate the dropdown from the back button, so you can't skip back more than one page. Removing the menu bar is surprising and goes against everything Microsoft worked for when they created Windows: consistency from program to program. Now MSIE 7 is the only program on your computer tht doesn't have the "File" command at the top left. That's confusing to users. Add to all this the fact that Firefox has thousands of extensions to add functionality (on mine, for instance, I can put notes to myself on a web page and run pages in MSIE format) and I can't see this doing anything to stop the flight to other browsers. And I'm someone who genuinely liked Microsoft Products. Bill Gates punted this time.

Iubitul Nov 30 2006 10:02 AM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Nov 30 2006 10:03 AM

RealityChuck wrote: And, for some reason, they seemed to eliminate the dropdown from the back button, so you can't skip back more than one page. Actually, the little arrow next to the forward button does that. RealityChuck wrote: Removing the menu bar is surprising and goes against everything Microsoft worked for when they created Windows: consistency from program to program. Now MSIE 7 is the only program on your computer tht doesn't have the "File" command at the top left. That's confusing to users. From what I've seen of the new OS, this look is very similar to that, and the new look of Media Player, so they are keeping with the same theme. RealityChuck wrote: Add to all this the fact that Firefox has thousands of extensions to add functionality (on mine, for instance, I can put notes to myself on a web page and run pages in MSIE format) and I can't see this doing anything to stop the flight to other browsers. And I'm someone who genuinely liked Microsoft Products. Bill Gates punted this time. IE 7 is a definite improvement, but Firefox is still better. I love the extensions I can add (The Web Developers tool bar is invaluable to me), the fact that this post is being spell-checked, not to mention the overall better security in Firefox. As for overall security, I have two firewalls at home - my router, and I have Zone Alarm. I run Spybot and Ad-Aware once a week, and I have all of my browsers set to block all cookies, except from the sites I specifically allow. I have never paid for Anti-Virus, and I haven't had a problem with any of my computers in the over 12 years I've been online. Yes, I'm one of those geeks who has built his own.

seawolf17 Nov 30 2006 10:03 AM

All the cool kids use Firefox.

Iubitul Nov 30 2006 10:53 AM

seawolf17 wrote: All the cool kids use Firefox. This is probably the first time I've been referred to as one of the cool kids...

sharpie Nov 30 2006 11:23 AM

We're a Firefox Family as well.

metirish Nov 30 2006 11:26 AM

Microsoft launched Vista today,not available for home PC's until Jan 30.

metirish Nov 30 2006 10:02 PM

Anyone else think that IE7 is slow as shit?, pages are taking forever to load at times.

metirish Dec 02 2006 02:45 PM

Dunb question..if I download Firfox does that then become my browser,what happens IE7 then....

ScarletKnight41 Dec 02 2006 02:49 PM

You will have both browsers available to you. I have IE and Firefox. I use Firefox 95% of the time. However, there are some sites that just don't run right on Firefox, but will run properly on IE (e.g., http://www.geocities.com/cryptogramcorner/ ), so I use IE for those sites.

metirish Dec 02 2006 03:08 PM

Is it free?

ScarletKnight41 Dec 02 2006 03:14 PM

Yes - Firefox is free. You can download it [url=http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/]here[/url].

metirish Dec 02 2006 03:16 PM

I did it....seems very fast...wow

metirish Dec 02 2006 03:20 PM

Why does the page layout look different?

ScarletKnight41 Dec 02 2006 03:26 PM

What specifically about the layout do you mean? Meanwhile, [url=http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?action=show&id=32]here [/url]is an enumeration of the differences between Firefox and IE. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox]Wikipedia[/url] also has a good deal of information on the topic.

metirish Dec 02 2006 03:59 PM

How do I uninstall it...

ScarletKnight41 Dec 02 2006 04:10 PM

You would uninstall it as you would any other program - go into your control panel, and add/delete programs.