Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

My experiences with the paid anti-virus community have not been positive. I have had issues with Norton and McAfee conflicting with software I normally run. I currently use Avast Anti-Virus and both Ad-Aware and Spy-Bot Search and Destroy. I suspect they are not top notch but by using them all, I have had pretty good protection. My innate cynicism kicks in when ever I read glowing reviews about different software packages. ZDnet.com has a good article rating the behavior of different anti-virus and malware solutions. Don’t be deluded into thinking that the ones marked free are really free. You will find them to be either trial versions or a version that tells you, “yes I have found much nasty stuff and if you will slip $50.00 in small unmarked bills underneath the un-welcome mat, I will then remove them for you”. Here is a LINK to go to the chart that rates the software, look at it with a jaundice eye and read the accompanying text. I didn’t find the chart all that use...

Ok, we all love FREE, if you are reading my blog, you know how often I like to put FREE in my blogs, ‘cause WE ALL LOVE FREE. Well, this time it is the jackpot, FREE & USEFUL! Comodo may be one of those companies you have never heard of and now you will wish you had. They offer a wealth of free software that focuses on security. Their catch phrase is the Trusted Internet . Basically what they want is to increase trust in use of the Internet and the businesses that operate on the Internet. They do have products they sell (hey they are a business) but they want to facilitate the Trusted Internet concept by providing software tools to protect computers. If people feel their computers are protected they are more likely to use the Internet and Internet businesses, thusly the Trusted Internet . If more people trust the Internet and use Internet businesses, Comodo will sell more of their products and make more money and therefore will be able to support all of their FREE software. Get th...

AVG Anti-Virus Free Major Update Problems If you have been having problems updating your AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition, you are not alone. One has to wonder whether the current update problems with the AVG Free edition is based on their interest in getting paid customers or an inability to solve a problem. I have noticed the problem for over a week which is computer time is roughly a decade. My innate cynicism has to question why they can’t solve their update issues. As good as I think AVG is, without updates it’s functionality decreases exponentially. Avast is a very good choice if you want to change to another free Anti-Virus. I put it on my wife’s computer over a month ago and have had no issues with it. I wasn’t able to get AVG to download to her computer and finally said, “I don’t need this stinking aggravation”, and changed her to Avast . I read quite a few reviews and Avast came up as being highly regarded. So far so good, so if you are fed up with the AVG upgrade issues try Ava...

Heads up, your AVG 7.5 version is going to bug you to upgrade due to it's nearing demise. I upgraded to the 8.0.100 after wading through the sales pitch for their paid version. I did the reboot and all the crap they ask you to do. I then tried to get on the web via Explorer 7.0 and could not get on the net. I uninstalled AVG 8 and got on the net no problem. I discovered a site noting an issue with AVG 8 and Google Desktop after doing an issue search. I thought what the hey and uninstalled Google Desktop, reinstalled AVG 8, rebooted and hooray, I am back on the net. So this may be just a random incident but if you use AVG and you do update and there are issues and you really like AVG and don't want to dump it gor Avira, and you have Google Desktop, maybe this will save you some aggravation. The following link will take you to the free AVG 8.0.100 download page if you want it. Personally I am going to do some more looking at Avira too. I don't like incompatibi...