Switching to Windows 64-bit

I've never tried the paid for stuff from AVG.

I'm quite happy with the free stuff myself.
Do buy all thier stuff and give us some feedback.

[Bilge_Rat]

I switched from XP to win 7 64 bit about 2 months back. It was very easy since win7 already includes basic drivers for most devices out there. As others have mentioned, it was very painless, certainly easier than when I periodically had to re-instal XP. I was up and running within a few hours.

I have not had any issues. There are 64 bit drivers for most devices and where there is not, like track IR, 32 bit works as well. I did not use the included file transfer program since I had transferred all my essential files to an external HD beforehand.

[jumpy]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

...Norton...

The best 'performance tweak' you can have with norton is to uninstall norton
Almost anything is better than norton.
Hands down it is the worst and most obtuse av program I have ever used in any of its flavours.
I've used several others, both subscription and free versions - AVG free, NOD32 subs, Avira free, Avast free, Panda @work, kaspersky(?) @ work, to name a few.

Currently using avast and have had no troubles with it on my machine. Except for when I preform as scan, I barely know it's there at all.
If you go through a router, I wouldn't bother with any 3rd party firewall, just use the windows one.

More than once I've had registry cleaners stuff windows - I'd say that unless you know what you are looking for to delete, just leave it alone. If it's a specific problem that is recurring, then there's always information to be found regarding a solution - the only time's I bothered with windows registry editing was to remove something specific that I knew was causing trouble.

Sometimes I think it's best to leave well alone; if the computer is working ok, don't fiddle with it

The easier you can make it for yourself to perform a format/reinstall of your C drive, the better. It's why I have 2 hdd - one for windows and programs, the other for files and backups and anything I want to keep. If it's something really important, I burn it to disk.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by jumpy

If you go through a router, I wouldn't bother with any 3rd party firewall, just use the windows one.

That's one thing I've been wondering about. The more I look at it the more I'm wondering if I should just use the free AV program and Windows Firewall... the only thing I'd be missing that I used to really like with Norton would be an anti-spam program for my email, but honestly since I changed ISPs and got all new email addies a couple years ago the amount of spam I get is negligible. Maybe my new ISP is filtering out a lot of it, but it's gone from several emails a day to 2-3 per week. Most of those are being sent to one of my old addresses and still getting forwarded to a new one, which could probably be handled by setting up some kind of filter on my email accounts with my ISP's webmail services.

ISP E-Mail accounts are standard targets for SPAM.
Thier SPAM filters should allow you to filter out what does get through.
I no longer use my Provider E-Mail.
I went to GMX and am most happy with it.
You can set GMX up to check your provider Account and get extra filtering that way also.

It works wonders like Gods from Olympius!!


Norton is a System Hog in the WORST way.
The 'Other' Major players are getting just as bad!
I don't know about all you other people?
But I run lean, mean, and FAST!

I owned an ISP back in the mid '90's and ran the whole shooting match.
So I'm not just a user.
I owned a Company!
Don't my hair look nice?

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

That's one thing I've been wondering about. The more I look at it the more I'm wondering if I should just use the free AV program and Windows Firewall... the only thing I'd be missing that I used to really like with Norton would be an anti-spam program for my email, but honestly since I changed ISPs and got all new email addies a couple years ago the amount of spam I get is negligible. Maybe my new ISP is filtering out a lot of it, but it's gone from several emails a day to 2-3 per week. Most of those are being sent to one of my old addresses and still getting forwarded to a new one, which could probably be handled by setting up some kind of filter on my email accounts with my ISP's webmail services.

Get a program that has real time scanning of Web traffic and updates at least once per hour, the program checks your e-mail opening and closing and has a strict program-controlled part, as you set it to allow exactly what you want in your computer, I use myself ONLY an antivirus program does not need more because it has everything I need in security,

[jumpy]

What email client you using Frau?

I've found the filters on thunderbird (as an example) to be quite good at flagging junk and dealing with it for me. Then again I very rarely give out my isp email, that's what hotmail is for lol.
Like you, I get some stuff delivered from an old account that I never got round to deleting, but pretty much anything that's not already in my contact list gets automatically moved to a temporary folder so I can glance over it before erasing.

I used to get all hot and bothered about pc security (true there are some things to watch out for still) but I never found anything worse than tracking cookies, despite having boot scans, spybot, adware, 3rd party firewall and AV and some other stuff. I put this down to my browsing and downloading habits more than anything else tbh.

What I currently use - router, os firewall, avast av free, firefox no script plugin, thunderbird email client, occasionally I'll run spybot or something similar to see if there's anything to catch.


EDIT:
@ Vendor, realtime scanning - nod32 and avast both seem to do this with web traffic and email

[Gerald]

I think they have it, but are unsure of their update frequency, if it happens every hour or only a few times per day

[frau kaleun]

I have Office XP so I just use Outlook for email. It's what we use exclusively at work, so I'm used to it and probably won't switch to anything else. I use my ISP's webmail to check personal emails if I need to do that when I'm not on this computer, but that's a rare event.

Oddly enough my current email addies are all through my ISP, but they must do a much better job of filtering out obvious spam than my old one did. Whenever I check what little spam I do get, it always seems to be something that was sent to one of my old ISP-addies and forwarded even though those accounts were closed almost two years ago.

I can probably go into my webmail and set up something to filter out any email that has the old ISP's domain names in the addresses - the chances of any legitimate mail being sent to one of those addies are very low, unless it comes from someone I didn't give a new addy to... and if so, I "overlooked" them on purpose, so I don't want to get their mail anyway.

[jumpy]

iirc when I had a subscription with nod32 it used to update definitions several times or more each day.
Avast seems to do it once every 12 hours or so. I've had others in-between when some major threat is getting all the security firms agitated

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

I have Office XP so I just use Outlook for email. It's what we use exclusively at work, so I'm used to it and probably won't switch to anything else. I use my ISP's webmail to check personal emails if I need to do that when I'm not on this computer, but that's a rare event.

Oddly enough my current email addies are all through my ISP, but they must do a much better job of filtering out obvious spam than my old one did. Whenever I check what little spam I do get, it always seems to be something that was sent to one of my old ISP-addies and forwarded even though those accounts were closed almost two years ago.

I can probably go into my webmail and set up something to filter out any email that has the old ISP's domain names in the addresses - the chances of any legitimate mail being sent to one of those addies are very low, unless it comes from someone I didn't give a new addy to... and if so, I "overlooked" them on purpose, so I don't want to get their mail anyway.

So I can not get your e-mail, if I want to give you something like a Christmas tree or any other thing...

You can set update times as you wish.
No matter what program you are useing.
AVG 2011 I leave at a standard update setting.
But it also will go background if it sees your doing something.
I don't think version 9 did that.

[Castout]

In defense of Norton

The current Norton IS NOT the old Norton.

I'm using Norton Internet Security myself and it's good and it is light on the resources.

I used to be using Comodo Internet Security but these days their product is not as good as they used to be and I got the impression they have gotten lazy and complacent. Can't blame them though as theirs is a free product so you can't really complain.

Avira is good too I trust that app.

As for 64 bit software there are more things to protect in 64 bit OS. For example some exploits that wouldn't work in 32 bit system would pass a security app detection in 64 bit environment. It's things like these.
Some security app are not even designed for 64 bit environment and wouldn't work in it. Imo a 64 bit security app needs to be designed for 64 bit environment from the development process and not just simply ported.

I used to be unaware of this issue with regard to security apps in 64 bit environment. Needless to say there are now a lot more app that caters to 64 bit environment better [than Comodo Internet Security for 64 bit].

[jumpy]

^^
interesting, how would you tell if it was ported to 64bit and not done more properly?

[Castout]

Originally Posted by jumpy

^^
interesting, how would you tell if it was ported to 64bit and not done more properly?

I don't know but the fact that the 64 bit version of the same app being unable to protect as well as the 32 bit version made the impression that it was.