Virus Protection

[heydude]

Why does adaware only slow down my computer! When i dumped it, my surfing was so much faster. ugh.

what is a virus protection that you use that does not completely block you out of everything you want to do?

seems you need a protection against the protection! all virus protection ever does for me is block me out of my own stuff that i want. hehe!Splat!

[redfox]

iMac

[ToomuchStuff]

The reason adware slows the computer, is it takes up memory. Even when not in your ram (don't think you can just add ram to get around it), it is on the hard drive, in a check me state (check me, do something else, check me, repeat).

I use Linux. Gaming is almost the only reason for Windows. I have one piece of software, that I haven't got to run on Linux yet, under an emulator, and there is no Linux equivalent. Pen and paper is the backup version. (cutlist software for woodworking)

[SteveinMN]

heydude, commercial Web pages have you-wouldn't-believe-how-many cookies and Flash applets. Just loading the landing page of my local newspaper sets more than a dozen cookies or Flash features -- or would, if I wasn't using protection (like AdAware, though I don't use that one). Software like AdAware has to intercept all of that traffic, which is why it seems to slow down Web browsing. And, as ToomuchStuff mentioned, it takes up RAM on your computer too, and if you don't have a lot of it, that may force the computer to swap to hard disk, which is thousands of times slower than RAM.

There's also a difference between virus protection and malware/privacy software. Facebook and Google can annoy you all they want by setting cookies (until you block them), but viruses don't work that way. Are you looking for virus protection or privacy software?

[heydude]

not sure, i just wanna be safe!

[SteveinMN]

Well, for what it's worth, I've heard good stuff about eSet and Avira antivirus apps. I've heard Microsoft's Security Essentials software is good, too, though I have a problem putting the word "Microsoft" in close positive proximity to the word "security".

As for privacy software, I primarily use the Firefox extensions NoScript and BetterPrivacy. I don't know if there are versions of these available for Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, but I'm guessing you could look. Using NoScript and BetterPrivacy is not so much a matter of safety as it is keeping Google's and Facebook's sticky little hands out of my Web business. I suppose you could say you're safeguarding your privacy.