Basically, upon looking at the Anti-Malware Pro package, I saw a nu,ber of programs I didn't have, and became interested. I phoned up my PC Shop, who are very good at what they know, and I asked about Anti-Spyware/Cleaning Programs. They only use SpywareBlaster and Spybot - Search and Destroy. They said you don't need CCleaner nor TuneUp, which I kinda disagree with, and they said that CCleaner and TuneUp are dangerous in their reg cleaners.
Anti-Spyware wise, they don't like CWShredder, they said it can cause damage, haven't heard of About:Blaster or Ewido, and say that Ad-Aware is fine but it isn't as good as Spybot.
Pretty much the same as the lunarsoft page.(obviously)
A lot of people have been trying to get users to use avast and outpost. In my experience avast wasnt up to par with etrust simply because avast would find a bunch of stuff and wouldnt remove it. Outpost is a pain in the butt to configure but it does use less than ZA. I just think if its hard to configure most people wont be using it right and then it isnt doing any good.
i kinda agree with you about configuring Outpost Pro. at first all of the rules and settings appeard to be menacing looking but it did not take long to figure it all out. their help topics easily explains everything and their support forums are awsome. i wish i had Outpost Pro from the very beginning.
A lot of people have recently switched to Outpost Pro and found it far superior to ZAP. Avast is doing better in tests at detecting and removing viruses and other related malware than eTrust, which has missed several items.
Thats great I'm glad you found something you like but I just cant see recommending that program on a broad level to people who aren't/dont want to take the time to figure it out.
Avast is doing better in tests at detecting and removing viruses and other related malware than eTrust, which has missed several items.
I dont know man, I had some real problems with avast finding trojans and not removing them. Maybe they have fixed it with some updates or something.(its been maybe 4 or 5 months since I have tried it last)
What tests are you referring to? I ignrore most of the sites that review these programs because they are usually just being paid off.
I just know what I have seen these programs do in practice.(and I have tried all the free and major paid ones.)
When I tested ZAP recently, it misconfigured a lot of items and was eating bandwidth by checking for an update every 2 seconds.
Hmm... I turn off automatic updates. Mainly because I still like my old copy of ZA better than the most recent one. But I put the newest build on comps I clean up and you still can turn off the updates.(not like a firewall really needs to be constantly updated anyway as long as it dosent have flaws, and ZA passes all the tests I have tried.)
usualy when setting up a firewall or other security application i think it's best to leave the automatic updates on as this will be easiest for the owner unless they know to periodicly check for updates. but we all know that majority of users out there dont do this. other wise you wouldn't be working on there machines in the first place. and yes, Tarun is right about ZAP eating up the bandwidth checking for updates every 5 minutes. and you are right RR, a firewall shouldnt have to be updated often. but with ZAP, every 5 minutes is too much.
I havent noticed this. Hmm.. I'll look into it more but its not something I have encountered.(and I use this program all the time) Could I have overlooked it? Maybe. What did you find that was connecting every 5 minutes?
MP obviously I dont turn off automatic updates on all programs. I know you know this but I wanted to make sure someone dosent read this and think its ok to turn them off.
Strange... can't say that I've experienced that. I have mine turned off and it never checks for them, much less every five minutes.
Still haven't tried out Outpost yet, but I promise I'll get around to it! My Internet just finally got hooked up at my new house today, so I've obviously got a lot of things to catch up on.
So, apart form the firewall discussion, what do you think about their views on anti-spyware? I would like to try out Outpost at some time, but then again, ZAP does seem to be doing the job for me.
So, apart form the firewall discussion, what do you think about their views on anti-spyware? I would like to try out Outpost at some time, but then again, ZAP does seem to be doing the job for me.
Hard to take their views to seriously when they haven't even heard of ewido. I haven't heard of About:Blaster myself, did you mean About:Buster?
Anyway, the programs they recommend are good, I use them myself. When I got a Trojan that installed spyware on my machine, they weren't enough (another user downloaded it, not me!). I now have lots more anti-spyware programs than I need, I cheerfully admit, but most of them are on-demand scans, not running in the background all the time. You should have 2 or 3 spyware scanners, anyway, you can't rely on any 1 to find everything (SpywareBlaster is not a scanner).
I mean About:Buster, sorry. I do agree, I once had a large peice of spyware and I had to use all the programs that I had to fully get rid of it, so I think I'll take your advice, minus CWShredder as they strongly do not recommend it.