This past week I got an email from a staff friend that contained a forward warning about a “new” computer virus. While it is a real virus and really can do significant damage to your system and stored information, there was a bit of panic-inducing misinformation:

>>This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been
>> classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.
> This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is
>> no repair yet for this kind of virus…

While this virus is not “the worst” or “most destructive” virus, all viruses can be a pain in the neck and it is important to have an antivirus in place to guart your computer and your information against these destructive little programs that (sometimes) really are able to erase whole hard drives.

For antivirus options you can go a number of different ways, from proprietary (and costly) programs like McAfee and Norton to free (and effective) ones such as Avast! or AVG.

I have installed Avast! on all of my machines and on a number of ones for family and friends and have had and heard nothing but good things from it.

To install the free Avast!4 Home Edition all you have to do is download it and register it for free every 18 months. You it will be updated as often as new virus defenitions come out and you won’t have to worry about viruses any longer.

Also, it seems that Avast! has an inexpensive Mac version (less than $40) for 3 years of virus protection and coverage.

I am not sure whether or not I would suggest getting rid of a proprietary antivirus software, but I have never had any virus get to any machine that I’ve put Avast! on (keep in mind, I probably browse websites and download programs more often than most users).

Beyond reccomending an specific antivirus, I must stress this, make sure you have some sort of antivirus software! You never know when you’re going visit a reputable site that has been hacked, like CNN.com was just this spring.

If you’d like to check out other free antivirus software options (AVG, Nod32, Avira and Kapersky antivirus programs) I’d suggest the list on this post at LifeHacker.com.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 4:10 pm and is filed under basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.