Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

Windows Security Suite is another piece of crapware floating out there. My daughter's laptop was infected with that insidious piece of trash. It is put out by one of those sleazy companies that infect your system and then want you to buy their software to clean off the infection they gave you. Somehow it got by Ad-Aware and AVG. I updated her Ad-Aware and it still didn't get it. I ran CCCleaner and that didn't get it. Finally I downloaded SpyBot-Search and Destroy. That nailed the sneaky little creep. Of course some other sleazeball will come up with a new one. Luckily there is some justice, a local sleaze merchant was busted and indicted for exactly this scam. Infect the system and then sell the cleaning tool. It was nice to know that he went to jail. Here is hoping that more of these computer vandals are hoisted on their own petards. I always liked that little turn of phrase, it seems so painful. Bottom line Spybot-Search and Destroy worked. I guess it is time for me to d...

I have used and recommended AVG Free Home Edition for years. Today I removed it from two more of my computers and will be removing it from all of them. I don’t know if it is some insidious corporate move to get people to change to the paid version of AVG or just an inability to solve their update problem. For over two weeks I have not been able to get my systems to consistently update. Sometimes they update and sometimes they do not. I have seen a lot of comments on the web expressing the same concern. I haven’t heard or seen anything from AVG that has addressed the issue. Since AVG is free it feels somewhat akin to looking the gift horse in the mouth to complain about it but somehow it feels like the other end of the horse. Anti-virus competency is not something most of us are willing to gamble is working. Again, since there has been no communication from AVG, who knows what is going on and how long it will last. In the meantime, I have uninstalled AVG and installed AVAST . I have had...

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...