Expert: Carolyn Meinel - 12/18/2005

Question
Dear Carolyn,

I have a 5-yr. old 1GHz PC, with 384 MB RAM, running Win. XP Home & SP2. The vast majority of the programs I run are Windows ones, & I do not use macros. Which AV software do you recommend? Its scanning speed is not too important, but it must scan files as they are opened/copied/moved, & it must produce reports.

Simon

Answer
PC-Cillin, from http://www.trendmicro.com/home/default.asp is highly rated and has the advantage of telephone tech support.

However, since you don't use macros, and if you don't download dodgy programs from the Internet, and if you use a safe browser like Firefox (free from mozilla.org) instead of Internet Explorer, you probably can get away with using free programs instead of buying an antivirus program. Here's what I would recommend in that case.

Avast! antivirus, from http://www.avast.com/eng/down_home.html or AVG, free from http://free.grisoft.com/doc/Get+AVG+FREE/lng/us/tpl/v5

Ad-aware, http://lavasoft.element5.com/software/adaware or Spybot Search and Destroy, free from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ You can use both together if you wish because they are compatible.