Hi



I could have written exact the same...

Jørgen



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The Unofficial YAMAHA Keyboard Resource Site

Hi Scott
Here are some reviews of software and hardware security from PC Pro magazine; you may find it an eye opener.

Bill

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/archiveproductsearch/32/Security

Scott,
1) use one link offered above or/and search on google how to COMPLETELY CLEAN UP Norton antivirus and related software. I had some problems myself, after cleaning it worked so much faster it was like I had a new computer.

2) As a matter of fact, I DON'T have any antivirus software running in my home PC. I only have the XP firewall, installed in the recent months. I had ONLY ONE virus attack in many years, say more than 5. And i have peer to peer programs running, and I browse the internet and download whatever I see. Though I don't recommend it to anyone that does "work" on their PC's, it has served me well.

You may not think you have a virus, but not all show up as causing damage to your computer, they may just be working in the background gathering information about you, your use, (Passwords, sites visited etc) and then sending it out to the perpetrator.
Without anti virus software you would not know anything about it.
Golden Rule, NEVER connect to the internet without at least a Firewall and Anti Virus protection.

Bill

BILL....I agree with your assessment and your advise 100%, never connect to the Internet with out ANTI VIRUS and FIREWALL
protection.....
TR

Bill and Tony,

though I may agree in principle, the only thing I need passwords about is Synthzone, one Greek free email I use for subscribing to whatever comes to mind, and Google mail.

OK, get in there and get my Greek mails, used primarily to transfer small files form work. by files I mean jokes and such.

Trident, the problem with viruses is that one infection is one too many.

You may not conciously visit any "dodgy" areas of the internet, but if one of your "safe" sites gets hijacked you won't know until you've been hit.

Also you can get still get viruses embedded in e-mails. Can you be sure that none of your e-mail contacts will ever become infected and send you an infected message?

Without a virus scanner you probably won't know until it is too late. I would strongly advise that you use something "just in case". The performance hit of AVG is so low you will hardly notice.

I know, please understand, i am not a moron, most of the emails I get at home are coming from myself from work, we are talking txt files, not even .doc files, I don't even have Office installed on my home PC. In my work they of course HAVE an antivirus, firewall , the lot .....hell, it is a software company!!

I have donloaded and run adware programs at home from time to time, but apart from the usual GAIN-related things that come embedded with DIVX codecs, there is nothing else.

As I mentioned, I may visit Synthzone, fark.com, an online text game site called trukz.com, maybe wikipedia or youtube and that is it.

Some other sites i use are primarily news sites, or URL referrals from FARK, which in turn are usually well knows sites.

That pretty much covers my internet usage.
I may install the free AVG thing just for the sake of it.

Update:

After several failed attempts at reinstalling Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite, even after following Zone Alarms so called complete removal steps, of which kept crashing my PC and causing me to have to perform a system restore to get my PC to boot properly again. After this experience, I've completely had it Zone Alarm (like I did with Norton previously) now.

I've gone ahead and taken the recommendations of others here and installed the FREE editions of: AVG AntiVirus , LavaSoft Adaware, and Spy Bot Search & Destroy, and enabled the Windows XP's built-in Firewall. Man, I already see a huge increase in my PC speed performance after having just switched from Norton/Zone Alarm to the above programs. Assuming I've still got more than adequate virus/spyware protection I'm glad I made this move, and have saved quite a bit of $$$ to boot, as the cost of those supposed pro version security suites are quite sustantial. It seems what you pay for in the pro versions of the same programs are feature enhancements, not the actual security level protection itself.

I also, thanks to MacAllcock's referal, plan to install the FREE version of Comodo firewall as well, as it looks to be more robust than the Windows built in firewall, and has garnered a lot of great website/mag reviews too. Is anyone here using/or used Comodo Firewall? Feedback? I also remember reading somewhere that the built in Windows firewall must be disabled when a 3rd party firewall software is utilized. Is this correct?


Thanks again to all that responded. Your continued feedback and recommendations remain very helpful.

Scott

Scott,

I use free avast virus protector, low resource, non-intrusive http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

and free Ad-Aware. Scan once a week http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php?PHPSESSID=c00f9437431c506d28a93f6a620de11a

and use the built in Windows XP firewall.


No problems




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Larry
SynthZone Frapper