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COMPUTER Tips and Tricks |
Part 1 Email Maintenance Part 2 Protect Part 3
Update Part 4 Clean up Part 5
Backup
Part 2b: Protect your computer against viruses
As
we learned last week, spyware and adware are about
harvesting information. Viruses are
about destruction. By definition, a
virus has to reproduce itself and spread before causing damage. According to experts, those who write
viruses have a main motivation of seeing their work make headlines. (The other, less destructive past-time of
bored computer geeks is sending sob-story emails in a contest to see how many
times it can be forwarded before it comes back.)
Companies that write antivirus programs are always in a constant battle to keep up with the latest threats. This is the reason why it is important to update your antivirus software at least once a week. Most commercial programs include one year of updates in the purchase price.
AVG Antivirus is one of the best free programs available. After downloading and
installing, it scans and updates itself on
its own for an unlimited number of years.
Here’s how to get it.
Go to www.grisoft.com and click on the AVG Free edition at the left side of the screen.
On
the next screen, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on
avg70free_300a419.exe
which
will download this file to your computer.
Once there, double click on the file to install the program.
All antivirus programs are running all the time in the background
to do their job.
As we learned last week, the number of
programs running in the background all
the time can significantly slow down your
whole system. Another advantage
AVG
has over other antivirus programs like Norton, is that it takes less system
resources to its job and
thus is less likely to slow you down.
AVG will probably remind you at least once a week that
it wants to go online (on
the Internet) to update itself.
If you are in
the position to do so, please let it.
As always, if you have any
questions, please feel free to call me.
Next week –
update all of your programs – especially
Windows.