Dragons

It's not often I get excited about firewalls or anti-virus software. But over the past couple of months, since the EVE & Ubuntu incident (more on that later.), I decided on picking up the usability reins of a bit of software I have only seen referred to twice in computer magazines and never in all the time I've been online. Sadly, as I don't subscribed to all of them, just don't have the time to stand in shop flicking through and getting all-over-wrought!

But, unlike the Government, I tend to run software in parallel - even though the general advise is not to. Conflicts? No, more than likely, you'll just find that one bit of software that's much better than the other. But if in doubt especially when installing AV's just unplug from the internet whilst initially testing and scanning.

But moving onto Avast, AVG, McAfee, Norton, Panda, Kaspersky. I have tried them all, and they have all failed in one miserable way or another. Out of these, it was my old stalwart (AVG) that I eulogised over, getting friends to install as been a far better option than the paid ones. That, when friends asked for help with a problem installation, I had my post-installation-cd complete with the latest edition along with Zone Alarm, a decent defragmenter and one or two other bits to help finish a new installation with ease.

Unlike Avast which seemed to hog so many system resources, it was like wadding through a vat of sand with both hands tied and a concreted block pulling you down. Trying to get anything done was ridiculously painful. Very secure, if only unusable in my particular set-up.

So with Comodo in the back of my mind I prowled the net in search of better security, I decide to go over to the site and download. Well, within hours of downloading Comodo Anti-Virus it found a virus that had been lurking on my PC whereas AVG (free version) missed it completely. So I quickly downloaded the firewall and malware products, again all free and updated frequently. If anything it's worth while giving this a go. Although with so many things available for free... where is the catch!