ADDITIONAL - Norton's AV is the Devil in Disguise

Hmmm...on second thought I took the AVG Free off my computer and am currently evaluating BitDefender AntiVirus Version 10. It annoyed me no end that I couldn't turn off the system scan at 2 a.m. with the AVG version. Probably there is a way to do that, but darn if I could find it and I said 'phooey on youie'. So far so good on BitDefender and it's highly regarded among those in the know. This copy is just for eval so I'll have to pay if I keep it (and, as usual for most of these try-it-before you buy it deals, it nags the living sh*t out of me constantly to do the right thing!).

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God help me if I EVER install another Norton utility! You'd think I'd of known from my former Commodore daze that Norton is a resource hog of the 1st ilk! I've been using Norton's AntiVirus 2005 on my desktop and version 2004 on my laptop. I'd upgraded from either 2003 or 2002. It seemed to be doing a decent job of checking my email coming and going and every time it did a system scan nothing untoward showed up.... what more could you ask from a program?

Well my desktop system got s-l-o-w-e-r and s--l--o--w--e--r. I thought I just had too much crap on the harddrive. I've got pictures and MP3's and nasty bits of orphaned files and Lord only knows what else clogging up the innards. I'd recently installed KHOU's recommended Weather Bug too and THEN heard that was an evil POS (piece of software!)...it is reportedly chocked full of spywareish, tattletale intrusions.

The last straw was when a pal was over and I wanted to show him something cool that I'd gotten in email and it took FOREVER for Window's Explorer to get anywhere on my harddrive. It was agonizingly embarrassing and he was popping off to my daughter the whole time wise cracking about how her mom was supposed to be semi computer literate and what was the deal with the slow down. Grrrrr...

So today I said ENUFF and uninstalled the Weather Bug and Norton! I'm not sure if I got all the nasty bits associated with both, but I'm 97% sure I got most of it and the speed picked up immediately. I went out and got AVG Anti-Virus Free and installed that puppy. The whole time MickeySoft's Security Center warnings were doing all but bitch slapping me to get my attention. The only thing it didn't do is bleat! It goes nuts from time to time any way because I don't use a firewall and, as I understand, since I run my own little network via Linksys, I don't need no stinkin' firewall. I set up whatever it is you have to set up so that some yoyo can't sit in front of my house and watch porn movies on my dollar and that's all the protection I need.

I'm very happy with AVG and it didn't insult me a bit that it's FREE. I'm also using their Anti-Spyware, but didn't notice the FREE one until after I'd PAID for the not free one, but that's okay. I'd rather give alms to GRISOFT than Norton any day!

Oh and for my weather watching I got a copy of WeatherPulse Version 2.05 that "does not display ads and is free. An excellent weather monitoring tool that sits on your desktop like Weatherbug". It's telling me right now that it's 47 outside my house. It was a gorgeous day today with sunshine and clear blue skies. I'd gotten so accustomed to the gray funk with drizzles that I'd forgotten what sunshine looked like! I thought I'd been transported to Washington state!

Anyway that's the way today went. You win a few and you lose a lot when you run crap software and what really galls me is that it's so insidious it creeps up on you and steals your resources and before you realize what has happened you are cussing the CPU and whacking your head on the keyboard while waiting for something to load. It WAS Commodore all over again!

Maybe for my next post I'll tell you how yesterday I decided to get rid of HTML in my email, both sending and receiving because it's just getting too tricky to use with all the evil bastards and their virus and worm infections. Check this out in the interim. (Thanks to TechBlog for the link).