@ my wits’ end

Antivirus for home use

There are three very good antivirus programs which are free for home use and for home use only: AVG, Avira  and Avast! free versions.

I check the AV comparison tests regularly and of the free versions Avast! and Avira are currently the champs – they even stacks up quite well against the current commercial top contenders: G-Data, Norton, NOD32 and BitDefender. The paid version of Avast! is much cheaper than those two alternatives so if you’re a budget-challenged business user it’s still worth considering.

Institutions (even non-commercial ones) are not allowed to use avast! Home Edition. However, ALWIL Software provides the full line of avast! antivirus products at special discount prices for non-profit, charity, educational and government institutions.

Registration required

One minor hassle: with Avast! you need to register initially (and once a year thereafter) to obtain a registration code. Trust me, it’s worth it. Avast! also requires a little bit of work to figure out how to run it properly. Just hover your cursor over the various buttons shown in the image below to see what they’re for.

You need to check the boxes for the drive, or drives, you want protected – initiate this task by clicking the “Folder Selection” button at bottom right. If all else fails, read the instructions! Press F1 or click on the ? button.

As with many programs, it may be set up by default to run at a time when your PC is usually switched off.  Click on the arrow button at top left and choose “Settings…” from the drop-down menu to change this setting.

There’s a better way

Anti-malware programs are a necessity with Windows. Nevertheless, they’re never 100% effective. If you wish to make yourself really safe against infection or any other disaster, you need imaging software. See here on my website. I have images of all 3 of my computers, if anything goes seriously wrong I can restore a machine back to the way it was a week or a month ago in under half an hour.

Priceless.

Find out more about viruses, other malware, how to deal with them and the best reviews and products right here on my website.