Inoculate-IT, free virus software, whats the catch?

[shurato]

I'm looking for some virus protection for my 2000 machine since my copy of norton systemworks 2000 just happens to not work for 2000. I'm wondering, is there a catch to these free virus scanners like Inoculate? How do they compare to commercial products such as Norton Antivirus?

 

[Wallydraigle]

I don't know if there is a catch persay but I went to their website and they want to know an awful lot about you before you can dowload. Stuff like your full name, address, phone number, that kind of stuff. Also it is illegal to make a copy of their software. Not even to put on another computer you own. You can't even upgrade your processor. You have to re-download the software if you ever do. It seemed pretty rediculous to me so I declined the agreement. I figure that once I download something, even if it's free, once it goes on MY hard drive it's mine, and I can make a copy if I want, or at least reinstall the software after a crash or something. As I understood it you can't even make a Ghost of your hard drive if you have this on there. No thanks.

 

[Moonbender]

Not sure if it is altogether legal, but I just entered false data (I pretty much always do with unsecure web forms). I can't auto-update, but since FileFlash (www.fileflash.com) posts every virus definition upgrade, that's not a problem.

I read in some other thread that Inoculate-IT is supposed to be very good. But it's better than nothing, I guess.

 

[Bojo]

I just started using it (thanks anandtech ) and from what I have experienced it is very awsome indeed. It fixed a virus that Norton couldn't fix!!! and its small, like 3 meg or something which is cool. And it's Free!!!

 

[thEnEuRoMancER]

I had been using InoculateIT personal edition for a couple of years before reading some review of antivirus software in german Chip magazine. Personal edition of InoculateIT was ranked 15th of 16 tested products. The reason was supposedly a low number of viruses it can detect. So I decided to try using AntiVir Guard (free to download @ http://www.free-av.com/). This software was ranked 4/16 on the same test. It detected two trojans on my system that InoculateIT didn't find, so I just keeped it. The con is you can't automatically install virus definition update with AV personal edition like in InoculateIT.