Anti-virus protection software

[french knocker]

I'm moving to the Lot from the UK in a weeks time, and am bringing my GB computer with me. Am I correct in thinking that I will be able to continue updating my existing anti-virus software? I also presume that I'll receive the annual premium renewal message. Generally am I likely to meet any problems installing a French network provider?

[BJSLIV]

Should have no problems at all.

If you already have your French phone number, you will probably find it easier to sign up from the UK using your existing browser etc, and then to add the connection details to your set up manually, therby avoiding the need for French set up discs!

The choice of provider will depend on availabilty, adsl/dial-up, intended amount of usage  etc etc.

 

[Richard-R]

Ditto above, do it manually. I had to phone Tiscali here in France to do it, because there website keep trying to upload IE (and a old version) to my computer.

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

Instead, you could try to download the anti-virus software from avg. It's completely free for private / home users. It updates itself every day and is much more friendly than Norton for example. I've now used it for a while and have nothing but praise. With the anti-virus sorted you'll want a firewall - get a free firewall from zonealarm too. All at a cost of zero.

[Quillan]

I have used this program and I know others who have as well. It lags behind commercial programs by about 2 to 4 weeks. This is not a big problem for a humble home user because the chance of him/her getting attacked is a lot smaller than a commercial enterprise. If however you have a website for a Gite, B&B or whatever then you will attract virus's and I would strongly recomment a commercial product. I personally recommend McAfee because I have tested it and have installed it at Fiat, Red Cross (UK) and Victoria and Albert Museum because in our testing  it came out better than the rest by a long way.

[Will]

I tend to agree with Quillan about free software - in my experience it doesn't always stay free if it's any good, and there are fewer guarantees when there is no licence agreement involving money changing hands. Having said that, AVG is a very good product and I use it myself on my portable machines which connect to the Internet less frequently than the desktop PC (through which an awful lot of e-mails are received, many carrying potential viruses and worms).

For the main PC, which is French and runs French Windows XP, I have Norton protection which was bought in England. There have never been any problems with renewing and updating the software.

I find Norton does its job very well indeed, and automatically updates itself very frequently. The only small difficulty I have, which means I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to all users, is that it can tend to slow things down, particularly at start-up and when opening certain types of document.

[Deimos]

I use AVG, ZoneAlarm and Windoze Defender and all seem to work very well (all free versions).

I did once buy (for my company) a copy of McAfee and it “took out” a Windoze 2000 system (on boot-up 100% CPU taken so you could not log-on or anything, nothing could un-install it). Called McAfee and they said it was a “known bug” and wished me luck. Never touched them again.

Similarly, Norton is very good at consuming vast resources on your computer (memory, CPU, etc.). They are basically an anti-virus software company and their firewall is poor. Things like their “personal security” (e.g. stopping personal info from leaving your computer) is so weak as to be worthless (anybody could bypass it in two lines of code)

Note that AVG is a commercial product that people pay for. Its only free for home/personal use. Thus it is not freeware/shareware done on an amateur basis but is free as part of their business model (i.e. to get market penetration). Same with ZoneAlarm. Their entry-level version is free because they hope you will upgrade to one of their “paid-for” versions. Thus again its commercial software, professional, etc.

Ian

[Quillan]

I guess again AV software is one of those things whwere some people have their favorites. I remember the bug you are talking about and it was vixed very quickly. I am however amazed that people installed it directly in to a live system without testing it first. Golden rule of any product, patch, upgrade is to test, test and test again before puting it in to a live system. Other than that rare bug in the product I have never experienced any problems and it has certainly found viruses that AVG could not find and thats happened twice in the last year with friends in France. You won't find this product in any big environment like merchant banks and alike, normally small to medium companies because of price etc, it's too cheap. I should explain, big companies like the known products and can afford them, small companies have less money to spend on IT because they normally think of it as a required evil on which they must spend money.

Well I am happy and you are happy, the only thing I would stress to anyone finding our exchange of views interesting is something I am sure you would agree on is get some form of AV protection and back up your data, you don't need to backup programs as you have them already (if you bought them legally that is) but data is something probably more valuable. Do it regularily as well.

[Deimos]

[quote user="Quillan"]

I remember the bug you are talking about and it was vixed very quickly. I am however amazed that people installed it directly in to a live system without testing it first.

[/quote]

There is not always the distinction between “live systems” and “test systems” where PCs used by individuals in smaller companies are concerned. When one purchases a bit of software from a supposedly reputable company, the cost of that software is massively increased if one then has to take the time to set-up a test machines, evaluate and test in a range of different environments, different operating systems (e.g. W95, W98, WMe, WNT, W2000, W XP) to make sure it wont “blow away” any machines. It’s a risk/consequences balance. If installing something to main company servers then true one takes a bit more care beforehand as the consequences or problems are a bit more serious. However, many issues can be configuration specific. For example, the Norton Anti-virus “enterprise edition” central update bug that would only take out servers when installed on W NT 4, and the central update was configured and subscribed. Because the central update subscription was licensed by update machine you only wanted to pay for it once so you did it on the server, as most people did not want to pay twice to test software that should have been tested by Norton. Fortunately in that case a really quick log-on, Control Panel and remove could just about remove the software if you were really quick before the “Blue Screen of death”, but it took most people quite a few goes to get in quick enough.

Whilst the McAfee bug may have been fixed quickly, the retail versions in PC World were not, so buy one in PC World and, in a domain based environment you were ***. I was not so much the bug that disappointed me, more McAfee Technical support’s attitude. After several telephone calls about how I should recover, they basically just “wished me luck” (sort of “we’ve *** you PC and will have nothing to do with helping you sort it sort”). Needless to say the company did not install the McAfee product through all it’s PCs.

In “olden days” I have had viruses sent to our company which were not detected by McAfee but were detected by Norton. However, these days virus detection rates are verified by independent organisations. For example, the AVG offering is continuously certified for 100% detection rate by ICSA labs (as do Norton, McAfee, eTrust and others).

I agree with the comment that larger companies have more money to spend but not that smaller companies considering money on IT is a necessary evil. Larger companies do not always scrutinise expenditure in the same way that smaller companies might. Thus an IT manager will tend to take a cautious approach and not save money (after all, why should he bother) whereas smaller companies might spend more time looking for better value (without loss of quality).

I think they all have limitations and shortcomings and problems. My own machine runs far bettwe now with AVG and ZoneAlarm that it did when I had Norton stuff installed (so I now have a paid for copy sitting in a box unused).

Ian

[Quillan]

I don’t really want to start a long thread on just this well laboured point but as it’s raining and I can’t get out to put my tatties in at the moment I thought I would reply.

 

If you have over 25 PC’s and working in a server environment then most software suppliers offer a corporate licensing program which will not normally require machines to be individually licensed. Running multiple versions of operating systems from the same company also creates unique problems in both maintaining the desktops and of course help desk support. Theres loads of other things like increasing server space to keep disk images etc, etc which makes it truly not cost efficient I have come across this situation before and have shown the large cash benefit of converting to only one operating system by upgrading and replacing desktop (and laptop) machines which is the usual reason why people stick with old operating systems. This not only reduces down time and serviceability but staffing levels (less desktop support staff) no requirement for multiple image storage (that’s a bit by bit copy of a hard drive in to a file for those that don’t know) and by not putting the new equipment under a service contract. In fact these days anyone taking maintenance contracts out for anything other than servers really need their head examined.

Why is this well the answer is simple. In a corporate environment one buys the most reliable kit like for example Compaq or HP who have the lowest failure rates. Whatever the failure rate is, say 1%, you simply buy in extra machines so if you need 100 you by 101. The spare is kept in a bonded store and is exchanged when a user’s machine becomes faulty. The supplier with whom you have bought the machine will also give a 3 year warranty then sends an engineer the next day to fix it then it is simply returned to the bonded store. Same with printers. 100 machines at £25 per year for a annual service contract you have saved yourself £2,500 in the first year that’s £7,500 over three years. Of course in large corporate where there are over a 1000 the figures all start to mount up. Seeing as it costs you the same to extend the warranty for three years you have no maintenance cost for year 2 and 3. At the end of 3 years the technology has moved on the kit is written off financially so you replace it.

This means you only have to test on one operating system and one desktop as they are all the same. You can use any desktop with big enough hard disk and memory capacity as a basic server and providing it is not (and it should never be anyway) connected to the main live network existing licences under corporate agreements can be used. A software company/supplier is often reminded that if they won’t allow this then another product will be sourced which normally gets any problems with using the same licence more than once for test purposes puts this problem nicely out of the way.

Using corporate licences when negotiated properly attracts massive discounts so one would not go round to buy copies of software from places like PC World. You also get far better technical support in as much as if you have a big problem like the particular one you mentioned (I was at Ford (Fiat) New Holland the tractor manufacturer at the time) you just mention that its no good to you and you will have to go to a competitors product which results in them sending you an engineer to sort it all out.

The old BSD was always a problem but then Back Office (Microsoft) and Zenworks (Novell) can configure a PC with an empty hard drive connected to a network in about 3 to 4 minutes so even in a live environment you can just command the system to reload the desktops. Seeing as you control what people have on their desktop program wise they are all locked down via policies so there are no real problems with them installing their own programs.

Personally there is no perfect AV program just as there is no perfect anti spam program they all have their unique quirks and problems and outside a company/corporate environment there is probably not much in the way of difference between the level of service one gets. The only thing I would say is that as McAfee has the largest portion of the market it is obliged to spend a lot of money on R&D and virus detection which it does which is why it is the market leader. Lets also not forget it’s pedigree either i.e. the server end was formally Dr Solomons before they bought the company out.

All pretty boring I know but the rain still has not stopped so off for a kip instead.

[Owens88]

But which is best against Bird Flu ?

[daryl-et-elaine]

Despite what Norton and McAfee might say in their advertising hype - their products suck. They have a nasty tendency to wipe out aspects of Windows operating systems, and what's more just love to eradicate PowerPoint presentations.

If you want good protection, you will not go far wrong with the free version of AVG. Having used the paid-for version in my work environment, I use the free version both on my home PC and laptop and contrary to a previous posting, AVG is probably the only AV Programme which updates faster than its counterparts.

An AV programme is only half the battle however. It is imperative that you also have an efficient Firewall running, together with an Anti-Spyware Programme. Currently, you can obtain both for free from MicroSoft. Defender (Beta) is an Anti-Spyware programme which at the moment is free and in its second Beta version. It will be available for sale later this year so sign up now and get the benefit while it is free. MicroSoft's Firewall does all that a paid-for Firewall will do, and often a good deal better.

Don't be tempted to run 2 Firewalls and /or 2 AV programmes as an extra safeguard. You could end up having a load of trouble.

Daryl

[daryl-et-elaine]

[quote user="Quillan"]

 In a corporate environment one buys the most reliable kit like for example Compaq or HP who have the lowest failure rates.[/quote]

 

Errr ....... Don't you mean they buy the cheapest. Go into PC World and watch how many HP's get returned on a Saturday morning.

 

Give me a Dell anytime!

[Will]

Wasn't the question about whether the programs would continue to work, and updates be available, in France, rather than highly subjective personal opinions about different programs and makes of PC?

[Rob G]

I heartily agree with Daryl. I have tried various different commercial AV programs for home use, all of which have caused different kinds of problems. Norton was the worst by far, and made the whole system unstable. AVG Free edition is stable, updates itself daily, and for the last 18 months has kept me virus-free.

There are some other basic rules to follow too. I recommend SpywareBlaster, which runs in the background and detects anything nasty trying to download and install itself, and also Spybot Seek and Destroy, which I run at least monthly to check my hard drives for nasties. All of these are free. Also a very obvious point - be careful when on the Internet! Far too many people click "OK" to anything and everything that pops up. DO NOT click OK on anything unless you're absolutely sure what it is and what it will do to your PC.

Final recommendation - get rid of Microsoft Internet Explorer and use Mozilla Firefox instead. It's free as well, has some great features that IE doesn't have, and is widely thought to be much more secure than IE (i.e. it doesn't clandestinely allow things to download and run without even asking you, as IE has been known to do.)

If anyone wants any web addresses for any of these freebies, let me know.

Rob

[Quillan]

When we (that’s the IT consultancy I owned) tested AV software we did not care who was who we just wanted a good stable product with good support and worked. McAfee came out the best in all these areas. One should not get confused however with domestic products (Security Suite) which include firewalls, ‘bolt in’ protection for Outlook . We looked at just an AV program that ran on severs and desktops. The home edition is different in many areas to a commercial version. Statistically people with a non commercial email address are far less likely to come under virus attack than those with one. On the occasions that viruses have been detected they have been sent to my business address and not my private one so it’s not surprising to hear that any machine with any AV software has been virus free for 18 months. How do they know they are virus free, simple, the AV program has not told them it has detected a virus.

Likewise computers bought for home use are different to commercial versions in as much as the specifications on some parts are different (video, sound, CD and DVD) because there is a difference in usage. A computer connected in a commercial environment to a network does not require a CD and DVD because you don’t allow users to install their own software and CD/DVD’s are held separately in a ‘Jukebox’. You don’t need ultra high resolution graphics (unless it’s for products like Autocad) to type documents or do spreadsheets and you don’t need a Dolby 5.1 surround system which annoys the rest of the office.

Somebody mentioned Dell, at the V&A where we bought well over a 1,000 new desktops and quite a few hundred laptops it was imperative that all machines were identical. Dell was unable to do this, in fact they told us that at the time around 1 in every 60 would be different. The reason for this is that they are clone builders and they buy their components in the open marked and use the JIT system of manufacture. This means you can end up with say several different network cards and video cards in a purchase of 1,000 machines. Their MTBF figures were not as good as Compaq or HP (o even Acer) and their warranty was return to base which then requires expensive maintenance contracts. They also did not have the ability to deliver the machines with a pre loaded desktop. I know of at least two companies personally that did buy Dell (against their IT departments recommendation) because they were cheap and have had to replace them within a year as they did not perform and were not reliable enough for what they required.

The problem with a lot of IT managers is they don’t actually know a lot about IT, they are in to budgets, buzz words and saving money (most come from a bean counter environment somewhere along the line which is a historic thing). They read PC magazines on trains, learn the buzz words and like to watch IT consultants squirm when they spout these stupid words and ask them what they mean, that’s why we use sale and marketing people, they translate for us. That’s the commercial world, when you move in to the public sector it becomes a total nightmare but by far the worst of all of these put together are the general public which is why the companies like PC World and Dixon’s employ the people they do.