Computer help - Calgary

[mark]

Originally Posted by OCDP

I'm getting a mac as soon as I can afford one.

Just a question though for PC Antivirus. I am using Shaw's Home Secure or whatever (hey, it was free..) I am wondering if anyone notices if it makes your PC run slower? I have a year and a half old Toshiba Satellite (du core, 2.4ghz yada yada yada) and I swear it runs like a piece of crap these days. Extremely slow loads on everything, slow to bootup and load, just all around slooowwww. I use my laptop for internet and MSN mainly, no gaming, not much downloading. I can't recall if my PC started going slower after the install, so I just thought I'd ask if anyone else notices this. Sorry to hijack.

Shaw slowed mine to a crawl, big time. Uninstalled it and machine sped back up.

[mike31154]

I have Shaw Secure as well and I'm pretty sure it's to blame for some of the performance loss. The cost of protection I guess. Shaw Secure is essentially F-Secure which they buy from the parent company under license and provide a limited number of installs for their customers. No idea which is the 'best' AV application, but I've heard of troubles with the Norton product as well, especially on Vista. I'm still running XP. I've been tempted to wipe the HD and start over, but then it's a hassle setting up the network again, all the applications, hardware, drivers.... aarrghh.

[Snaz]

Any modern AV will have an overhead, some worse than others. Norton has been historically the worst but they say their newest version 2009 is much improved but I will never recommend Norton AV to anyone.

Grisoft.com has a free version AVG that is very good but it is buried in their website. Search their website keyword "free" or goto download.com and search for AVG there. Excellent FREE AV for home use.

I manage our corporate AV of about 150 seats. Sophos.com, excellent product. I would recommend it for any company with more than 10 computers.

Keith