Toolbox Keepers - Part 1

Posted by Ken

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With Internet safety being this blog’s prime directive, every now and then I like to step outside the box and call your attention to things that are related to both Internet safety and productivity. As such, over the next week or two, I will be posting about software and online services — tools that can help you protect your computer and make your life a little easier. Think of it as a Twelve Days of Christmas list, only I haven’t decided if it’s going to be 12 or not.

I’ll start with the ever-important tool, the one that no computer should be without: an antivirus program. There are quite a lot of them out there — some paid for and some free. Being on a tight budget myself, I like these two freebies: avast! Home by alwil software and AVG Free Edition from Grisoft.

There’s something special about these two.

These are free to home users and are not be used in a commercial (business) environment. They do offer other products that have more features, but you have to pay to those.

Personally, I use avast! Have been for over a year and it’s been great. It doesn’t get in the way (read: does not hog my system resources), and it’s easy to use. Updates are frequent, so I feel my computer is secure. There are some features I don’t use like P2P shielding, Internet Mail shielding, and Web shielding, to name a few. But that’s either because I have other tools that do that for me, or I don’t use things like P2P.

It also has something called a Virus Recovery Database (VRDB). Despite your best efforts at being virus-free, this VRDB can attempt to repair infected files (i.e., return them to their original state before becoming infected) on the off chance that a virus does get through your defenses. This feature can be done automatically, or manually.

I haven’t used AVG personally, but I know it has a large following and has a good performance rating. I have had some experience with it by setting it up on some friend’s computers. Because I’ve been satisfied with avast’s performance I haven’t had the need to switch. But if I did have a reason, I’d definitely give AVG a shot. It also provides free support and updates albeit on a much slower frequency, and has a variety of scanning options to suit your needs.

Not ready to install a new antivirus program just yet? No problem, try some of these online services instead. Because they are the online counterparts to their paid-for siblings, it’s possible that some of them will only scan and not repair/remove infected files. So keep that in mind that while they may identify a virus on your computer, they may leave the removal of virus to their bigger, paid-for brother:

Whatever you decide, use at least something. And if you have a favorite that I haven’t listed here, then please post a comment to let me know.

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