I've gone and done it. I've bought software.

Spending my money like there's no tomorrow. Sheesh.

What have I bought? Well, after years and years without it, I've bought some anti-virus software. Panda Platinum 2006 Internet Security to be exact.

I've had it on evaluation for a little while and it's proved to be good. By good I mean:

1) Unobtrusive (it's even got a "manage CPU usage" feature).
2) Effective. Panda is, as far as I can tell, regarded as the best of the best when it comes to virus busting capabilites.

Just those 2 points were my whole criteria for selecting which AV 'solution' (I hate 'solutions', why not just call it software?) to use.

The only downside, it's expensive. I've just paid nearly 80 Euros for a year's worth of updates. However, compared to the competition, it leads by miles.

Anyone not running anti-virus software, download the evaluation version of Panda here and give it a try. You might even find a few nasties you weren't aware of.

Um... Or you could have downloaded AVG7 for free, which is one of the best anti virus scanners around... they have a bunch of different payware versions, but for personal non-business use they have a free edition. Little tricky to locate on their website though, but easy to find through places like majorgeeks.com


very streamlined, unobtrusive, and causing a LOT less problems than Norton & McAfee (Anyone ever answering the phone at an ISP helpdesk can tell you the horror stories about those two. It boggles the mind that they're so 'succesful')

I tried AVG free edition but it didn't do what I wanted it to do. It was unobtrusive in the fact that it didn't clutter my desktop or bother me with pop-ups every 5 minutes (I'm looking at you Norton) but by crikey it slowed down my HD accesses.

Panda does as well, but by a far lesser degree to other AV software. HL2 level loading times are not really noticably increased, which is a good thing for any AV software to manage.

I also have trust in Panda's pre-emptive virus detection (they call it TruPrevent) and of course, you get a firewall. Not a very configurable firewall, but a step up from WinXP's built-in offering.

Perhaps in a year's time I'll be wanting a better firewall. in which case I'll drop back to Panda's standard AV software and get Agnitium Outpost, or whatever happens to be good at the time.

ClamWin