NetWarden Recommends

[netwarden]

I know I said that I was not going to recommend one software over the other, however most keep asking anyways.

So Here it is:

If you are into Free then I recommend AVG antivirus free edition for your anti-virus needs. Use SpyBot Search and Destroy (with Tea Timer) for your anti-spy-ware protection. Use the Google Pack for your pop-up blocking and other miscellaneous security features. In the 'Google Pack', if you are going to download and use the 'Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition' then don't download the AVG and if you are going to download the 'Ad-Aware SE Personal' then you will not need to download the 'SpyBot Search and Destroy'. It is NOT recommended to double-up on certain security programs as they may interfere with each other. The last but not least piece of the protection pie is ZoneAlarm firewall (the free version). These are the programs I install into customer computers after I cleaned or restored their system and they don't already have up-to-date tools available to protect them.

The above will provide the minimum required protection and should do if you also practice safe surfing (staying only within reputable well known sites). With that in mind, you get what you pay for, in other words if you want the best protection, then you are going to have to shell out some dough. It is a lot of blood, sweat and tears to develop software let alone software that does any of what the above software does and when it is all done there still updates and support to worry about. I don't blame programmers for saving the premium stuff for the paying customers, however it is nice that they still keep the free stuff as well.

Here are two reasons I don't like recommending one software over another, one is that each software has a different way of doing what they do and they all have there strong and weak points. To make things harder, I am not an expert software tester, nor do I have a lab full of computers test them with. Second when it comes to other peoples money. People tend to be more critical when it comes to them putting their hard earned cash on the line. So to get around this, I'm not going to 'recommend' a commercial solution other than to make sure you cover the four bases (anti-virus, anti-spy-ware, anti-ad-ware, and the firewall)...

Well... OK, I will tell you what would be on my Computer (if I had the money) and why. Despite the fact
my older brother (a computer tech) is a 'Norton' fan, I myself would use Panda Internet Security and Ad Muncher to protect my computer while I surf (actually Ad Muncher is licenced and installed in my system).

First the Ad Muncher. Ad Muncher is cool for one major feature, it looks for and eats ads before they get to the browser, messenger, and anything else that serves ads via HTTP. Yep, even kills the ad banner in MSN Messenger! (the older messengers - they found another way to pump ads into the newer ones)

Second Panda Internet Security - First of all their web site is full of relevant information on viral threats, you can subscribe to their free email news letter and viral alerts, and free 'threats' scan from their web.

Panda Virus News and info here.

Their software 'Panda Internet Security' has a cool feature they call 'TruPrevent' that detects new/unknown threats based on viral behavior rather than depending solely on a signature file. This is good considering there are dozens of new viruses/variants/threats every day being unleashed on the net every day. Also their software covers Anti-virus (duh), Anti-spy-ware/Anti-ad-ware, anti-phishing, Anti-spam, Firewall, and has Parental Controls to name a few.

Well that's it, you decide what you like whether it's Norton, McAfee, AVG, PC-cillin, BitDefender, Kaspersky, Panda, etc., etc. Like I said earlier cover the four bases at least. You are welcome to post a reply to this post and tell me and the others your favorite combo and why.