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Selecting the Best Protection for your PC:
Computer Anti Virus Software

Why do I need AntiVirus Software?

Hmmm, let's see, what's the top priority for every company? Virus protection. I can't stress enough how important it is to have the best possible anti virus software on your box. The problem with most antivirus software, though, is the fact that it's a huge memory hog.

What Features to Look for in Anti Virus Software?

So first of all, we should try and define what it is exactly that we want in an antivirus package, and then come up with some recommendations as to which one to choose.

Obviously, the first thing you need is a piece of software that will scan all the files in your system whenever you tell it to.

It's also very that the software scan outgoing and incoming e-mails to ensure there aren't any viruses being sent out or received.

The reason I say outgoing as well as incoming is because a lot of programs will scan incoming e-mails, but they never bothered to actually check the e-mail going out. This presents a big problem, especially when you think about the fact that your PC might get infected by some means other than e-mail. This being the case, if you're mail program happens to send out e-mail, it could very well embed the virus in the e-mails going out.

Another very important piece is the scanning of media. When it's inserted or connected to your PC. It used to be a simple list scanning floppy disks or newer inserted into the drive, but now it's also gone further to scanning Cds and DVDs and USB devices.

Likewise it's very important that the scanning application scan ever executable before it has a chance to run through the auto-run feature of CDs and DVDs. More recently it has also been necessary to scan auto-run on any media, because a lot of plug-and-play devices, specifically USB hard drives, now include software on them that executes the moment you plug the drive in to the machine. Examples include such things as installing drivers or installing custom software for a particular device.

The registry is also a concern. It's become more and more important for antivirus products to monitor changes made to the system's registry, because there are a lot of viruses that attempt to install themselves and then run when the system starts.

Because of all these requirements for antivirus, a lot of products have become very bloated, CPU intensive, and massive memory hogs. It seems to have become the norm in computing to go this way, which unfortunately leaves those with older computers in a bit of a predicament.

So Which is the Best Anti Virus Software to Use?

In an effort to combat some of these issues, I've taken some time to evaluate some of the products that are now available on the market for antivirus. There are a lot of them, and I'm not in favor of the bundled software. By this I mean, I prefer antivirus software that is just that, antivirus software, and nothing else.

So which one do you get? I've tried a tonne of different products, and frankly, the only one I can give the thumbs up to, is the AVG Anti Virus Software tool from Grisoft. Why? Because it does EVERYTHING listed above, plus it's got some great extra tools, and it's NOT A MEMORY or RESOURCE HOG.

So this is the first way you can speed up your PC. Uninstall whatever anti virus software you're using now, and go get a copy of the AVG Anti Virus Software -actually, I'd recommend getting the software first, then uninstalling your current anti virus utility.

Once you've got your PC properly protected, you can move on to the next section.

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