Does anyone have any thoughts on a good virus/security software?  My trial is over with the preinstalled McAffee’s software.  It’s kind of a pain in the ass how much it pops up when I’m first connecting to the internet.  I’m not sure if it’s overkill on precautions of certain files or it’s part of their sell tactics to get you to subscribe.  I don’t mind subscribing, but I would just like something that works in the background and doesn’t interupt everything that I’m doing.  If not McAffee’s, then what other software would be a better choice?  Well, I just wanted to vent.  Any thoughts would be appreciated.  Thank you.

I owned two previous VAIOs, one desktop and one laptop and each came with PC Cillin.  I sold those two and purchased an RZ Desktop and the TR1, and both came with McAffee.  I can say after dealing with each I prefer PC Cillin.  McAffee wanted to stop normal scripts because it thought it was a virus, when in fact it was just a normal program file.  I have since deleted the OEM McAffee and purchased PCCillin for both my Sonys and another machine.  It works great, no problems.  They sent me warning on the mydoom virus before it was even posted as a widespread problem.

The nicest thing is that it doesnt pop up those pain in the ass warnings that are nothing but a selling tactic.  I hate that crap.  That alone had me looking elsewhere.

PC Mag and CNET rated PCCillin pretty high.

Hope this helps. I promise I have no affiliation with Trend Micro.

David.

On my TR I use Norton Antivirus 2003. It’s fairly unintrusive and I only have it watching my e-mail and scripts. I turned off the auto-protect feature because I’m pretty safe when it comes to downloading stuff and normally do manual scans if necessary. It works extremely well and catches all of the viruses coming into my inbox.

I’ve tried McAfee stuff before and for some reason, it’s so incredibly annoying and has this tendency to slow down any system I install it on. It’s also way too paranoid like the poster mentioned before. I found myself constantly disabling features within McAfee every time I wanted to run certain programs or to test my own VB scripts.

On the security front, I normally only use Windows’ built-in firewall protection since I’m not too paranoid with security for whatever reason.

I also keep a copy of SpyBot 1.2 installed to search for malware/adware products and that works extremely well (and is free!).

I use McAffee Enterprise 7.1 myself, but such are the joys of connecting to a corporate network via a VPN. If you want something free, Grisoft is offering AVG free for home use. I can’t really vouch for it personally, but you can’t beat the price…