McAfee sub. expiring - what next?

[pjbuk007]

I go with AVG - worked well for three years.  They also now do antispyware. The only thing about AVG which confuses people is that when there is a new version there is a message which implies (to some people) that you now have to pay.  This is not true - you just have to find the AVG free website and download the latest versions.

I have tried spamfighter and zonealarm in the past, both caused great problems.  I have also had paid for McAfee and Norton.  In my opinion not worth it as they cause even more conflicts with various quite normal software.  But I am behind a firewall on my Draytek vigor wireless router.  The free ones are so good that I see no point in paying for bloated suites which mess things up.

I have use adaware Se  (free) as well as use cCleaner every other day - amazing how many malignant cookies it finds.

Ask Jack at Guardian Online is good:-

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/askjack/cat-271/

The problem with some of the "free" sites which check/analyse your computer is that they give exaggerated reports so that you are scared into buying their solutions.  There are articles about this somewhere on the link above.

Oh, and the AVG free (including their new rootkit)/ccleaner/using adaware se as ell periodically was is recommended by my neighbours who build and trouble-shoot computers.

[downside]

If you want an easy life i.e. forget all this nonsense about protecting your computer, then you should seriously consider switching from Windows to Linux.  There are some very good user friendly versions out there like Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS that are as easy to use as Windows XP.  On Linux you can run things like Firefox and OpenOffice just the same way you do on Windows - except there are virtually no security risks.  You do not need to do all this defrag nonsense either as Linux is a far more efficient system.

The only real drawback is that there is not much family tree software available for Linux except Gramps.  What I do is have a Windows and a Linux partition and I boot to Linux when I want to surf the Internet and then I log to Windows if I need to run a program that is not available compatible with Linux.

It is amazing to see the differences between the two systems.  When I boot up Windows I have to sit around waiting for 10 minutes before I do anything as Windows does all kinds of scans and updates.  When I boot up Linux I can start working straight away.

Since Linux is free it is worth investigating. You can download a copy and burn an iso image to CD and run Linux off of a CD without installing it on to your hard drive.

[Scottiedog]

Hmmm ... not too sure about the Linux route if you're having to ask the MacAfee question.

AVG is good - personally I use Avast! which is also free for personal use and very reliable. Zonealarm is good too but I wonder where it's going to head now Checkpoint have taken over - the cost of their commercial software is eyewatering.

For anti-spyware look to everybody's free favourites - Spybot and Ad-Aware.

Les

[downside]

Hmmm ... not too sure about the Linux route if you're having to ask the MacAfee question.

Contrary to my last email, I've just managed to get PAF running on Linux using WINE (Windows in Linux emulator) which is pretty exciting and one more reason to ditch Windows altogether.

Just think about that for a moment.  A free, secure operating system that is virtually immune to viruses and spyware that can run anything that you run using Windows. 

It must be worth investigating.

[kerryb]

Begs the question then, why more people don't use it?

Kerry

[mshrmh]

Many thanks for all your responses. I'm going to print this out to follow up when(if) McAfee cut us off from updates.
Much as the idea of Linux appeals, I don't have the necessary confidence/knowhow to try this route - maybe at some future time...