Are free anti-virus programs worth the money?

Free? Worth the money? What's this guy on about? Well hang in there and all will be revealed.

There's a common misconception that it doesn't matter what anti-virus (AV) software you've got on your computer, any will do. After-all, why should we pay £50-60 for the market leader when all it does is slow our computers down? There are plenty of free AV apps that don't slow the computer down and provide just the same level of service. Well, that might not actually be the case and what you might be doing by using some of these free programs is actually leaving your computer, the valuable data that's stored on it, and your identity open to abuse.

Let's start with these slow and 'expensive' AV apps. Have you ever sat down and wondered why they appear to slow your computer down? Well it's usually because they're doing so much compared to some of the freebie apps that actually do very little.

Let's take Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2008 for example - it's one of those 'killer' apps that everybody warns you against. But let's look at what it's doing. OK, it's checking for viruses, but it's also checking for worms, trojans and Spyware. It checks your emails for spam and helps keep your kids safe when browsing the Internet with it's parental controls. It checks that web sites are what they say they are and not spoof (phishing) sites designed to empty your bank account at the first available opportunity. Whilst you're working away, and even when you're not, it's checking and making sure that there are no hackers accessing your computer over the Internet and it's checking for root kits. Finally, its two-way firewall replaces the one-way firewall that's built into Windows XP. It's beyond the scope of this article to explain these features in more detail suffice to say that Av apps like these are working really hard to protect your computer, its data and your identity - and all for less than £40*.

Now let's have a look at a very popular free anti-virus program, AVG. This is not a slagging off of AVG, it's a decent product. But AVG produce it to introduce you to their range in the hope that you will pay to upgrade to their security suite which does, more or less, what NIS does. what we're trying to detrmine here is whether using free AVG is actually a cost-effective option.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition makes no bones, it does what it says on the tin and it does it well. It checks for viruses, worms and trojans in files and emails, and that's it. OK, you can add separate free Spyware detectors, firewalls, parental control software and Internet Explorer 7 contains anti-phishing, but they're all seperate applications that need regular attention and which their providers usually produce to get you to purchase their more powerful sibling.

So the questions is, is the data on your computer and your identity worth £40 and a slight drop in your computer's performance? Ours is.

You can purchase AV software for your home computer at any good computer shop or on-line store. AV software for your business may need a little consideration to ensure that it protects your complete system. In either case, dynanti is able to supply and install AV software and show you to get the best out of it to ensure maximum protection. Contact us for more details.

*Priced on the Symantec web site on 20/02/2008.

dynanti offer web cam services

Having installed and run a web cam facility for the Southport & District Amateur Radio Club for the last two months, dynanti is now offering its clients a web cam installation, setup and hosting service.

dynanti will supply the hardware and software, install the camera inside or outside and setup the local server to upload images to the client's web site - and if the client doesn't currently have a web site, we're happy to help there too.

The hardware needn't cost an arm and a leg either - the local server need be nothing more powerful than a 500MHz Pentium III with 512Mb of memory, a copy of Windows 2000 and access to the Internet using a Broadband connection.

You can view dynanti's demo web cam at http://www.dynanti.co.uk/services_web-webcams.html. Further details can be obtained by contacting us by phone, or email.

Do you suffer from poor Broadband Internet performance?

Just a couple of days ago we were reporting how the future of Broadband lay in the sewer in terms of performance and today we're discussing the age-old problem of pathetically slow and unreliable Broadband connections. What goes around, comes around as they say.

We have had an 8mbps BT Business Broadband account since it came out, relying on a 2mbps connection before that and a 512Kbps connection before that again. However, there was never cause for complaint until we got the latest and fastest connection and, since then, we've suffered really poor performance (sometimes down in the slow hundreds of kilo-bits-per-second) and dropped connections on a regular basis.

I go through the usual ritual of ringing BT and starting at the bottom with the lowest common denominator support staff, work my way up to the highest level over a few weeks of constant ringing, get an engineer to come out, only for him to test the line and find that it's absolutely fine. I then get bored, suffer the poor performance and start all over again a few months later.

Well it appears that there may be an answer to this terrible service that we all have to put up with. It's been 18 months since Davey Winder upgraded to an 8Mbps ADSL Max Broadband connection. He's suffered all the usual poor performance, drop-outs, and the like - but it seems he's hit on the solution and published it in the February edition of PC Pro. Apparently the majority of routers we can buy use Texas Instruments' (TI's) AR7 chipset inside them - so much so that it's hard to find one that doesn't, especially since manufacturers rarely tell the consumer which chipset they use. However, when BT sends out an engineer they are equipped with a non-AR7 router, declare the line fine and charge the customer for the privaledge of doing absolutely nothing at all.

There appears to be some form of incompatibility issue between AR-7 equipped routers and ADSL Max, claims Davey, but neither TI nor BT are breaking their silence on the issue. Grossly unfair we think and, in the meantime, we have to battle with fluctuating speeds, dropouts and disconnections.

Ah well, roll on 16mbps Broadband - that should be a riot. I think I'll go back to 56kbps dial-up, it should prove to be quite a bit quicker.