What The Hell Is Wrong With MS?

[NullAshton]

If you're doing everything that you should be, you shouldn't need anti-virus protection, correct. But shouldn't you still patch your computer, just in case you do in fact get a virus?

And anti-virus programs don't slow down my computer all that much.

[Suicide Junkie]

As long as you don't have the boat anchor that is norton running...

[NullAshton]

AVG has worked fairly solidly for me. No annoying popups, it's not crippleware.... along with the (free) version of Kerio, it keeps my computer safe.

[Baron Munchausen]

Norton and McAfee have apparently become bloatware in the last few years. Kaspersky is supposed to be the 'best' for detection of threats. AVG is ok, but not as good as many of the larger operations products. MS's own anti-spyware program Windows Defender is actually pretty good for detecting many threats. (Bought of course, not developed in house, but that's normal for MS...)

And you do need to keep your OS up to date on security patches. It's not just odd corners of the net that now host malware. Cybercrime has become organized and directed in a big way over the last few years. It's not just pranksters and lone scammers anymore. Major organized crime is finding ways to get keyloggers and form watchers and other financial spy software into many legit websites by way of third-party sources.

Google is now estimating that one in ten websites is already infested with some sort of malware. (Oddly enough Google's own ad service is one of the vectors for that infestation... crime organizations buy advertising from Google using front corporations and then build the trojan into their ads!) So you can be infected now just by surfing major sites like Yahoo.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05...e_malware_map/

http://www.techspot.com/news/25262-g...are-laced.html

[Fyron]

Norton has been bloatware since at least '99. Its not a recent phenomenon.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

In my experience, not having AV is a good way to pick up viruses.

[capnq]

My AV monitor (ClamWin) doesn't noticeably slow down the system, but my anti-spyware monitor (Spyware Doctor) was such a resource hog that now I just do manual scans after I've visited sites I don't trust.