Your turn to help me –
Let me just say you guys’re really awesome and I really do take your advice.
For ex: I had lots of fun in Chicago and Washington DC and St. Louis :) I edited my poems. I have indestructable bluettes gloves. My froogle wishlist got fixed! I’m now McAfee free and an AVG anti-virus program richer. I even have someone taking care of my car.
My followup Q: Do I need an anti-spyware program in addition to the anti-virus AVG program?
For the less-nerdy: Did you make a Simpson’s avatar? If you did and blogged about it, link me so I can see it :)
I highly recommend CounterSpy by sunbeltsoftware.com. It’s $20 for the first year and 10 a year thereafter, and worth every penny. Very effective, and easy to install, effortless to use.
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/CounterSpy/
Comment by Larry — September 11, 2007 @ 9:29 am
The simpliest solution is to prevent spyware from getting on your computer by not installing any untrusted applications.
Generally, if your computer isn’t running really slowly, you’re likely to be clean of spyware and do not need anti-spyware. If computer is slow, seems to always be doing stuff in the background, and get lots of popups, then it would be worth running anti-spyware.
When I used to setup PC’s for companies, I like to keep everything clean of any unneeded applications. The less you have, the better they run. The ideal PC is to have everything online and accessible through only any web browser.
Comment by Jason — September 12, 2007 @ 12:19 am
That’s true, Jason, but a good spyware program won’t just clean your computer from existing spyware, but will monitor the computer and ports so that new spyware is prevented from getting on the computer.
Comment by Larry — September 12, 2007 @ 1:01 am
Thanks for the advice, men — Sometimes I think my computer’s running slowly, but usually when this happens, it’s cuz the antivirus is scanning stuff.
So so far I think I’m clear of spyware — If anything seems to slow though, I’ll look into CounterSpy :)
What I’m a bit unclear on still is whether CounterSpy is still needed on top of AVG, or if AVG serves as anti-spyware too.
Comment by Siel — September 17, 2007 @ 11:06 pm