+1 My machine is a bit slow RAM wise but the new AVG can drag it down at times, usually in the MA when its updating
This new Firefox is a memory hog too but Ill keep using AVG anyway
I tried just about all the free anti-virus programs because I’m cheap and I’m currently using Microsoft Security Essentials. Seems to be a pretty good program and it’s light on resources.
After reading this thread I think I will try avast. I too am currently using AVG and damn!!! When you start your PC open up the task manager and just watch the resources AVG will suck out of your system!
A wireless router pretty much does nothing for you, security-wise. In fact, millions of people still use theirs without any sort of password required to access their connection, which is pretty much waving a giant banner that says HEY RIP ME OFF.
You can catch shit from basically anywhere, and sometimes from nowhere at all. Even known sites get hit with bad banner ads with malware in them from time to time. Some software and music/dvd’s have damaging DRM (digital rights management) software hidden in them, or even malware. Hardware has occasionally had stuff hidden in it (cough, China, cough).
My AV program usually doesn’t do much unless some skeezy site hits me with something major… the sort of annoying adware and malware you’d see day to day gets taken care of by things like Malwarebytes and AdAware - but I don’t schedule regular scans, so its up to me to notice the symptoms.
I highly recommend getting the latest version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, installing it, and running it once a week or so (it scans your shit). It’s user friendly, and effective enough that a lot of nasty malware tries to kill it first (insert CCW joke here). If you can’t get it to install at all, that’s a pretty big indicator that you already have something nasty - but you can get around that by renaming the installer program to something like Banana.exe.