Use Only One Anti-Virus Software
16 March, 2013
This week we are going to look at Anti-virus products and the implications of their use – or non-use. Last week we talked about the central processor unit (CPU) and how they have a drastic effect on the speed of a PC (this is the brain of the PC). Buying a new PC with a fast CPU will help extend the useful life of your new purchase. This is because the currently available CPU’s range in power rating from as little as 700 for an Intel Atom to as much as 12,000 for an Intel i7 – yes around 20 times as powerful.
If you have a 5 year old PC and are wondering why it has ‘slowed down’ it is not because its CPU (probably rated at around 800) has not worn out but because you are putting a greater load on it with modern software. The latest Adobe Acrobat readers, Adobe Flash Players, Java’s and modern Anti-virus products are far more comprehensive and take far more power to run than any of their counterparts from 5 years ago. When it comes to Anti-virus software these new packages are getting more comprehensive for a reason.
Today there are 10 times the number of computer viruses and threats to be found lurking in Emails, on the Internet in general and on individuals’ hard drives and memory sticks. To ‘try’ to cope with all of these threats the Anti-virus software programs have had to become more powerful and as a result take more power to run. A modern computer may need to allocate 5% of its power to run the Anti-virus program – an old PC may need to allocate 50% of its power for the same thing.
There are a huge number of Anti-virus programs around now-a-days and some that have been around the longest and have the biggest name in Anti-virus (starting with N) we don’t recommend. Also a home user can install and use any Anti-virus software the like (even one of the free ones) and do this legally, whereas if you are running a business then the use of a free Anti-virus is actually illegal.
We currently recommend Trend Micro for our business customers with 1 to 10 PC’s and Trend Worry Free Business for larger networks. For home use a lot of people have always use the free AVG product however we have had much better success with the free version of Avast Anti-virus. Keep in mind that NO Virus scanner is perfect and the all still rely on the computer user to have some degree of IT savvy.
Also don’t think that you are better off with running 2 Anti-virus programs as they will normally conflict with each other & take more power to run which often results in both of them failing to stop a virus or malware threat. Microsoft is also turning out their own Anti-virus software as part of the operating system these days in the form of Microsoft Defender, however, we still prefer to use a third party Anti-virus such as the ones mentioned above. As a result MS Defender also needs to be manually turned off in its settings.
We have been inundated with new customers (both home users and businesses) in particular in the last few months and most of them are mentioning this article as the reason they come in – wow you are not the only one reading this!!!
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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