GeorgeT

If you follow the magazine reviews, PC Tools Spyware Doctor is one of the best detection and removal programs available, however most users do not know that the very capable Lite version is available FREE from Google. Didn't see it mentioned any where and thought I'd post and let others know. If you go to Google's 'Pack' section, which offers loads of free software, one of the programs available is Spyware Doctor. This is the same program sold retail with just a few of the live scanning options missing from the configuration menu, so it detects and removes the same threats as the full product. If you know anyone with an badly infected system, this is positively worth the download. Its saved me from having to re-install Windows XP from scratch on customer's systems numerous times.

Talk about loaded questions. When it comes to A/V software, you'll find everyone has their own opinions on what's the best. Norton probably has one of the best detection engines out there, problem is its become so big and bloated over the years that it also reduces system performance by 20% or more. The latest Norton 360 isn't quite as bad in the resources department, but it is still a bit of hog. If you want the absolute best protection, the Norton product is your best bet.If you want top notch protection, but also don't want to slow your system down significantly, you can't beat Avast. Clocking in at between 2-4% system resources, Avast is very light on performance, unless its actively updating at the time, during which time the system will slow a bit. But this only occurs once a day for a minute or two, you'll get the message that the definitions have been updated and things go on as normal. Now with the latest update to 4.8, they've added full root-kit detection and removal as well as spyware protection. Avast looks to be placing itself into a position to supply full PC security and not just A/V. Definately one to watch and I recommend it to all my customers who do not currently have an up to date A/V program installed. - Free for 14 months at a time and it works well.Kaspersky is another one which is pretty good, not quite as light weight as Avast, but has a great detection engine. I'm in the fence on this product. Good detection with decent resource requirements, however it just doesn't seem to have the polish of some of the others.Just my $.02 worth on the subject. For the money, you can't beat Avast. Several of my corporate customers have even switched to their Professional version with good results.

Vista drivers have come a long way and are easily obtainable for most current hardware. The release of SP1 also has helped with many of Vista's growing pains, however if you're asking will Vista perform as well as XP with most games, the answer is going to be NO. Even with SP1, Vista generally runs games slower on a hole than XP with either SP2 or the newly release SP3. (Caution on SP3, it has shown to result in system crashes with some AMD hardware configurations). If you have over 2GB of memory, a top of the line cpu and sub-system, the best you'll get is Vista to run about the same speed as XP, it will never run faster. If you're a gamer and want the absolute highest frame rates, you're still going to want to stick with XP if you're thinking about building a new box or formatting the drive and reinstalling the O/S. Just finished wiping Vista off a pretty high end dell for my wife's son and installation a copy of XP in its place. He's much happier and Elder Scrolls no longer drops to the desktop every few minutes.

While I'm not a fan of many of the website based remote utilities, they do have their place in providing support to others, when both parties can log in and authorize the usage. For actually connecting to systems remotely, should the systems be Windows based, I prefer using the built in remote desktop utility. If you've ever tried it, its fast and provided you're using a reasonable password on your Windows box, provides decent security. (Don't go use the name of your dog or birthday or some just as simple). Beyond that, when the need arises, VNC isn't bad, not quite as efficient as RDP, but as fast or faster than Norton's PC Anywhere.........program is a dog imho.

Although Comodo is pretty good and makes for a secure firewall, the I personally prefer Zone-Alarm from Zone labs. ZA seems to be a little less obtrusive while running, yet blocks the attacks and passes all security tests that I've seen run on it. I do consulting for a living and ZA is my first choice when recommending a free or inexpensive firewall. Don't be fooled by PC-Tools firewall, which resembles ZA very closely, it is no where near as good in testing.Many people will say they have a hardware firwall, as they're using a router, however most of the consumer grade devices only provide NAT protection and are not a true bi-directional firewall. I still recommend backing it up with a software solution on the individual PC for absolute protection.