What’s the best antivirus program?

We hear it almost everyday: “I’m sick of dealing with viruses!” followed by “What anti-virus program should I buy?“

Viruses and Spyware can do all sorts of damage to your computer.  That’s why people install and use antivirus programs in the first place.

Remember, NO ANTIVIRUS IS 100% EFFECTIVE.  The people that create viruses and spread them are specifically trying to get around as many anti-virus programs as possible, so each day some new viruses come out that could infect you, even with an updated anti-virus program installed on your computer.

 

For the purpose of this evaluation, I will not factor cost into my rating, but will note if a free version (not just time-limited trial or online scanner) is available and was evaluated.  I will also be considering only those titles that have a true real-time anti-virus scanning engine, not spyware removal programs like Spybot or TDSS Killer (though these can be excellent in recovering from a virus). I will also be evaluating the titles based on the Windows non-Server versions of the programs, not MAC, Linux, etc.

 

It’s worth noting that the grey area between viruses, spyware, and root-kits has now extended into network security.  The NETWORK FIREWALL used to be a separate concern than the ANTIVIRUS PROGRAM.  But as our computer usage has changed from electronic typewriter into Internet browsing machine, so has the need for antivirus programs to monitor the network traffic in and out of the computer.  Programs like Norton 360 or AVG Internet Security work as a higher level software firewall

 

Antivirus Comparison

NAME	FREE VERSION EVALUATED	SCANNING SPEED	NETWORK FIREWALL	SYSTEM RESOURCE USAGE	EFFECTIVENESS RANKING
Avast Free	YES	SLOW	YES	MEDIUM	Excellent
AVG Free	YES	FAST	NO	MEDIUM	Above Average
ESET Smart Security 4	NO	MEDIUM	YES	MEDIUM	Average
Kaspersky Internet Security	NO	SLOW	YES	HIGH	Average
McAfee All Access	NO	MEDIUM	YES	HIGH	Above Average
Microsoft Security Essentials	YES	MEDIUM	NO	LOW	Above Average
Norton 360	NO	SLOW	YES	HIGH	Excellent
Trend Micro Titanium Max	NO	SLOW	YES	HIGH	Above Average

 

This list is not comprehensive of all available antivirus programs.  It instead covers the most commonly used titles in the U.S.

These ratings are through MY PERSONAL experience, and were not conducted in a controlled test environment.  For that type of data, you may want to check a site like http://free.antivirusware.com/

Avast and AVG have been favorites among many users looking for free protection from viruses for years.  The scanning engines are comprehensive and dependable.  Avast seems to be especially good at guarding against web page attacks like scripts.

 

SUMMARY:  Get AN Anti-Virus program and keep it UPDATED (not expired).  That really is 90% of the battle.  After that, you can worry about everything else (speed, effectiveness, etc.).  That said, for most users I recommend (in order):

1. Microsoft Security Essentials
2. Avast
3. Norton
4. McAfee

If you ask a hundred different technicians their opinion, you’ll likely get several different opinions about which software is the best… and that’s for good reason.  Each of us has different experiences with different software and each virus works differently than others, so if one technician gets a lot of a certain type of virus that Kaspersky is good at removing, then he’ll think it “always works.”  If the same shop used McAfee a lot and it happened to be unable to remove that type of virus, he’d think it “never works.”  The bottom line is, there are numerous programs that claim to all be the best – a la “#1 Best Wok” for Chinese food.  The universal truth about virus removal that I’ve learned after thousands of cases is that there is no best option – there are just a long list of pros and cons associated with each one that usually make some trade of performance, features, and overall effectiveness.

 

We can REMOTE CONNECT to FIX IT NOW if you have any issues or just want us to do a FREE scan for you.
If you know you have a virus and want it removed, click HERE.

 

Have questions?  Send them to us using our feedback form and I’ll respond and post the answer on this post.

Amit Mehta

General Manager

Fast On Site Computer Repair

www.FastOnSite.com

Data Backup – Do’s, Don’ts and Consequences

It’s like brushing your teeth after every meal…  Everyone knows it is good practice and you should do it, but so many people rarely do.

In this post, I’ll be talking about DATA BACKUP instead of dental habits, but the old adage applies.  But in this game, the stakes are much higher than getting a cavity filled.  You could lose precious photos (which can never be replaced), critical documents (which could causes substantial financial loses), and more.

First, it’s worth understanding what a hard drive is.  You have one or more magnetic discs (called platters) that spin between 5400 and 10000 times per minute in most drives.  These are read from or written to by a head (the small rectangle at the end of the arm):

(image courtesy of Wiki Commons)

The gap you see there between the read head and the platter is about 50 NANOMETERS – which is MUCH smaller than even the thickness of a single strand of the hair on your head.  The gap is actually created due to the jet of air that is created from the fast spinning.  It’s a very delicate balance that must be maintained for proper operation.

This is why it’s SO important that you be gentle, especially when moving around a running laptop.

DO:

Backup your data – save yourself a headache later: Having ANY backup plan that you follow (follow being the key here) is a good idea.  Usually just “wanting” to have a backup plan is not sufficient to save your data.  It doesn’t matter if you burn DVDs, use a flash drive, or use online backup – just DO IT regularly.

Schedule it or run it regularly: How often you do it or schedule it for is up to you, but understand that when you need the backup, you’re going to lose everything up to the last backup.  That means if your backup runs on Sunday’s at 3 AM, #1) make sure your computer is on Sundays at 3 AM and #2) your computer will have a complete failure on Sunday at 2:59:59 AM – so you will lose 7 days worth of work.  If you can deal with that then no problem, but if you updated Quickbooks and downloaded pictures on Friday, you better be running your backup nightly, not weekly.  Extend this line of thinking if you are a power user and if you make big edits and saves throughout the day.  If you cannot afford in any way to lose what you did this morning (let alone last week), then your backup should be scanning for updated files and backing them up every two hours instead of each night.

So why doesn’t everyone just schedule their backup to run every hour?  There are considerations of CPU usage, bandwidth, hard drive thrashing, and more… so suffice it to say that you should schedule it to run as often as necessary, but don’t go overboard and schedule it for every 5 minutes continuously.

DON’T:

Forget to checkup on your backup: Don’t wait until a drive fails to see if your data was being backed up properly.  I’d say HALF of the people that come in with what should have been their backup find out that it was not running as intended.

Leave your data and sole backup copy in the same physical place: Putting all your eggs in one basket is a very bad idea.  If you are backing up using RAID only, or you just have an external drive connected to your computer, then in this case the “basket” is your home or office.  And the basket could catch on fire – that’s why you have fire insurance.  The fire insurance is dandy for getting you a shiny new Hard Drive, but what about the files that were BACKED UP on it?  Pictures of little Timmy’s first swimming practice won’t come loaded on the new drive.  So, consider doing a backup that you take off-site with you or back up directly to a remote location (like online backup).

THE CONSEQUENCES:

Hard drives fail:  You’ve probably heard it before: “it’s not a question of IF, it’s a question of WHEN.”  The spindle at the center of your hard drive can give out, the read head may stop reading, or the circuit board on the drive may get corrosion among other things.  We seem to get a lot of clients who had flooding and lost their drives that way… so whatever your disaster may be, be prepared.

The Cost of not having a backup: When drives are physically damaged, they may need to be sent to a clean room to be worked on.  Prices for these recoveries usually START at about a thousand dollars.

Sometimes it really is lost:  It doesn’t matter if you’re Bill Gates himself.  When the head crashes and grinds along the magnetic media, your data in that part of the drive is GONE.  We’ve had people cry in our stores, or try to throw more money at the problem, but sometimes there is no alternative plan if you forget to backup.

My Recommendations:

• Use a system that backs up AUTOMATICALLY – If you’re like me and don’t have the time or discipline to do backups manually, just schedule it once and forget about it.
• Do a local AND off-site backup.  This might include a portable hard drive on your desk and online or FTP backup.
• For desktops, use at least RAID 1 or RAID 5 internally
• If you don’t need a lot of space on your laptop, use a Solid State Drive (which is faster and less prone to failure)
• Do NOT use one of the “Unlimited Backup” solutions (e.g. Mozy / Carbonite) if you have a substantial amount of data or a big iTunes library.  I tested them and was sorely disappointed at the speed of upload (they throttle it back if you have a lot of files, so my initial backup would have taken 3 MONTHS – I called to verify this was correct with Carbonite).  I use the online data backup that we re-sell (obviously there are others, I am not trying to turn this post into an advertisement): http://www.fastonsite.com/services.onlinebackup.html
• Avoid RAID 0 (for example, where you take 2 80GB hard drives to create a single 160GB volume)
• I prefer Western Digital drives.  Seagate is another reputable brand of drive.  Many other manufacturers relabel these drives and re-sell them with their own brand name.
• Don’t forget about security.  If your computer is setup like Fort Knox with passwords, encryption, and biometric authentication but your backup is sitting on top with no security… it all effectively has no security.
• If you encrypt your data, DON’T lose the key… this is even worse than losing data through drive failure in my opinion.  Your drive will be perfectly accessible but you can’t read it because you lost your encryption key.

If you have questions about any of this, call us.  www.FastOnSite.com

What’s the difference between STANDBY and HIBERNATE?

It happens all the time; you’re done using your laptop but rather than shut it down you decide to put it on “standby” or “hibernate” until you’re ready to use it again.  So which one is it, standby or hibernate?

Many people consider the two interchangeable – no difference at all.  NOT TRUE AT ALL!  Here’s what you need to know about the two:

STANDBY or SLEEP:

-Continues to use battery power! (so don’t pull the battery out)

-Generally provides quicker “power down” and ”wake-up” so you can use your laptop again quickly

HIBERNATE:

-Does not continue to drain your battery (so you can pull it out and still start exactly where you left off even it’s a year from now!)

-Takes longer than “sleep” to “power down” and “wake-up”

SLEEP essentially ”holds” your system RAM in its current state so everything in memory stays there (at the expense of continuing to send a “refresh” signal and voltage to the cells).  Conversely, HIBERNATE writes the contents of your system RAM into a file (hiberfil.sys) on your hard drive, then literally turns itself off.  When your computer goes to restart, it notices that instead of loading all the files from the beginning, it can just rewrite everything into memory where it left off and continue from there.  This file does take up an amount of hard drive space equal to the system RAM – though for most systems this is not an issue.  For example, if you have 4GB of RAM and a 500GB Hard Drive, the hibernate option will use 4 of your 500 GB of hard drive space (less than 1%)!

Most laptops will know when your battery is critically low even while it’s in sleep mode.  It will then switch on momentarily to enter hibernate mode – so you should not lose any data.

Of course there’s something called “Hybrid Sleep.”  Vista introduced this mode mostly for desktops (which usually do not have the benefit of  a battery backup like laptops do).  It allows the speed of wake-up that sleep provides, along with the assurance and security of hibernate.  It does both: keeps memory active and writes the RAM contents onto the hard drive.

All in all, you should shutdown when you can (or if you have relatively low RAM of 1GB or less).  When you prefer not to do a full shutdown, default to hibernate.  If you know that you’ll be using the PC again soon and the battery is not already too low, you should use standby or sleep.

Some computers have the hibernate option disabled or just not visible by default… call us and we’ll help you get it sorted out.  In windows XP you can go to “Start”, then “Shut down” and press the “Shift” key when the standby/restart/turn off prompt appears.  It will change the standby option to hibernate if your system has hibernate enabled!

Next topic: What’s the right way to do a BACKUP?

Memory confusion? Forget about it! RAM vs. Hard Drive

When someone says their computer is low on memory… what exactly do they mean?  Are they running out of space to save files, or is the computer running slow?

THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF MEMORY THAT PEOPLE GENERALLY REFER TO.  Explained here so you can understand the differences:

System RAM (Random Access Memory) – this is generally in the range of 256 megabytes to 8 gigabytes on recent systems.  This is where programs reside and run from WHILE THE COMPUTER IS RUNNING.  When you shut it down, it gets cleared – temporary usage, so to speak.  For example, when you open a photo editing program and work on an image, it is stored in RAM and finally saved to the Hard Drive when you are done working on it so it can be available later when you need it.

Hard Drive Space – this is generally 40 gigabytes and up – recently into the range of terabytes of storage.  This is where your files are written to and read from.  This storage is SAVED EVEN WHEN THE COMPUTER IS OFF.  For example, you download 100 music files and save them.  These get written to your Hard Drive, not system memory.

Next Post:  We’ll talk about what makes Hibernate and Standby different from each other – it really does matter which one you use!

Windows 7 – what you need to know

For a lot of reasons, users revolted when Windows Vista was released.

Even to this day, it’s possible to purchase new machines from some outlets and demand that you get Windows XP.   But Windows 7 proves that someone at Microsoft was listening, and when you spend millions of dollars on a product redesign, somthing good can come out of it.

Windows 7 is more intuitive and stable, plus it runs BETTER on OLDER HARDWARE than Vista.  That’s a first.  It means that if you take the same computer hardware and load Windows 7 on it instead of Vista, it’ll run SMOOTHER and use less resources than Vista.

Here are some screen shots of the new Windows 7 interface:

 

Want to get Windows 7 on your PC?

Call Fast On Site Computer Repair at 630.793.9349 today or email at pcrepair@fastonsite.com!