Protect your PC – What a Racket.

I was browsing the Sunday sales flier for a not so best purchase price establishment. $129 for their team of specialists to “protect your new pc.” Gets you Antivirus, antispyware, installation and a so called speed and performance boost. Ok. Let’s start with antivirus. AVG is FREE for home users. Antispyware? How about Microsoft Defender and occasionally run Adaware, again both are FREE. Top that with setting up your system for OpenDNS and you can block phishing, adult content etc. How much? You guessed it, FREE again. Lastly. Speed and performance boost?!? Are they kidding? On a new pc what are they going to do, remove all the crapware that comes on the pc while replacing it with some half junky bloatware AV package they love to sell in their ads? Any IT person with experience knows the two “classic” AV packages nearly rate as viruses themselves in what they do to Windows stability and performance. Do yourself a favor. Apply the $129 toward a nice iPod Nano, subscribe to some podcasts and use these free solutions instead. Don’t forget going into add/remove programs and removing all that crapware is free too with a few mouse clicks.

Links Mentioned:
AVG Antivirus
Microsoft Defender – Antispyware
Adaware – Antispyware
OpenDNS – help block phishing, adult content etc for free.
Previous FiT Post on OpenDNS

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under FiT Tips, George Starcher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Kat Marion

I have to agree with Jeff there. For techie people, it's indeed easy to avail of all these free stuff. But for most people, esp. older ones, they don't know where to begin and in all probability, they might even do more harm than good if they try to do it themselves.

Not to say you should go out there and purchase everything in sight. An investment on a few key tools will go a long way to ensuring your PC works long and hard for you.
georgestarcher

I would not say "never." There is plenty of malware that gets past all antimalware software. Even for large companies with resources. My point was for regular home users there are free alternatives to the mediocre products and installation service for the money pushed by some of these support vendors. These measures just set a minimum bar to stop the most common issues.
Acid Reign

.....I like AVG, myself. It's pretty low-profile, self maintaining. That full scan at 8:00 AM every day, can be irritating. I just cancel it, if I'm going to do anything processor/memory intensive. It can run on my system, though, with no noticeable impact, if I'm just surfing/email checking.

.....I used Norton from 1999-2004. The only things it EVER found, were certain VB-based uninstall scripts some apps use. Great, Norton. Doesn't want me to uninstall stuff! Meanwhile, pre-Firefox, with Win98/MSIE 6.0, we were regularly getting TORN UP by Active-X-based malware. Norton absolutely crippled my old 300 mhz system, too, speedwise.

.....If you keep your system patched, take care what you install, don't open suspect attachments, and run a non-Internet Explorer browser, you'll probably never get malware/viruses, anyway!
georgestarcher

Jeff, Its a blog. Commentary happens. Besides not everyone who finds the blog or posts via things like google know all the alternatives. The level of readers varies as with all things and especially who comes in due to a particular search. Links to the appropriate free products were provided.
Ron M

The funny thing is I find that AVG actually finds more virus/spyware then the commercial versions like Symantec
Jeff Yablon

Oh C'mon . . .

Yes, those things are all available free. Yes, the "services" offered by BestBuy, Circuit City, et. al. (GeekSquad, FireDog, etc.) are overpriced, underperforming drivel. And sure, your readership is smart enough to know this.

SADLY, though (and I mean that sincerely), the VAST majority of people aren't tuned in well enough to know they can take care of this stuff for free, all by themselves, and that's the clientele that these companies prey on.

Err . . . or rely on. Not everyone . . . actually, almost no one . . . WANTS to know these things and take care of them personally. Factor in marketing costs and labor, plus the companies that provide such services right to make a profit, and you can see why the services charges "so much".

OTOH: they do a pretty bad job, of this there is little doubt and MUCH evidence.

So (self promotional plug uncoming): try using a REAL support company. Like Mine:

http://pc-vip.com

Tell everyone you know. But please, stop bashing the "bad guys" without providing enough contect to make your comments meaningful.

Jus' my opinion . . .

Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
PC-VIP Inc./Virtual VIP
http://pc-vip.com
http://vitual.answerguy.com
Acid Reign

.....For the most part, I agree. However, we've had some issues with OpenDNS, this holiday season. I've gotten up early, several mornings, the past two weeks. More often than not, we get that "looking up Google.com" message, then a "can't find site. Going into the router and setting the DNS server back to "default," AT&T one, fixes it. Yeah, I set it back to OpenDNS a few hours later, and it all works fine. But the next morning early, problem's back. And so, I'm back on the default, for now. It looks like OpenDNS has some issues. And they invariably report "no issues," when you check their website.

.....I'll toy around with it a bit more, in the coming months. I'd rather see them deal with the problems openly, like Mozilla does, rather than take a head-in-the-sand position, like I'm all too familiar with, being an AOL user...
Scotty More

Good Point! In fact I'll buy 3 iPods for each of my kids and leave their lap tops with the freeware!

have a great new year!

Scotty More