Here's the deal.
A couple years ago I took several antivirus apps and put them to the test, having them scan a bunch of known viruses/trojans/etc. Bitdefender came out on top, recognizing all of them. I went with that. That was back at version 6 or 7, I forget.
Now, I feel like Nostradamus. Bitdefender is getting top ratings in a few magazines, and that one anti-virus review web site (they gave it "gold" rating, the highest). Cool. And it is very good at picking up malware. The thing is, it's starting to invade my system a little too much. One of its DLLs, sockspy.dll, causes Weather Watcher to crash once in a while. Recently, I discovered Sandboxie and Bitdefender don't get along.. if Sandboxie is running and Bitdefender does its auto-update thing, the Windows blue-screens (yes, I'm sure Bitdefender is the culprit).
The fact is, some of these anti-virus app integrate themselves too tightly into the OS, and start causing issues and conflicts. So maybe I should just ditch Bitdefender entirely? If you're tech savvy, and you're smart about where you surf, what you download, and what email attachments you open, I think you could most likely never have to face a virus.. am I right? I mean, my laptop doesn't have any anti-virus software on it, and I've not had a single problem with it. Besides, if I did come across a file I felt was suspect, I could always use any number of online virus scanners that check files for you via an ActiveX control.
What do you think? Are there others who have shunned anti-virus software? How's it working out for you? Can anyone suggest other alternatives, maybe? Maybe a lighter weight anti-virus software that doesn't drop all sorts of DLLs into your system32 dir and place OS hooks everywhere, causing system conflicts? I'm open to suggestions.
A couple years ago I took several antivirus apps and put them to the test, having them scan a bunch of known viruses/trojans/etc. Bitdefender came out on top, recognizing all of them. I went with that. That was back at version 6 or 7, I forget.
Now, I feel like Nostradamus. Bitdefender is getting top ratings in a few magazines, and that one anti-virus review web site (they gave it "gold" rating, the highest). Cool. And it is very good at picking up malware. The thing is, it's starting to invade my system a little too much. One of its DLLs, sockspy.dll, causes Weather Watcher to crash once in a while. Recently, I discovered Sandboxie and Bitdefender don't get along.. if Sandboxie is running and Bitdefender does its auto-update thing, the Windows blue-screens (yes, I'm sure Bitdefender is the culprit).
The fact is, some of these anti-virus app integrate themselves too tightly into the OS, and start causing issues and conflicts. So maybe I should just ditch Bitdefender entirely? If you're tech savvy, and you're smart about where you surf, what you download, and what email attachments you open, I think you could most likely never have to face a virus.. am I right? I mean, my laptop doesn't have any anti-virus software on it, and I've not had a single problem with it. Besides, if I did come across a file I felt was suspect, I could always use any number of online virus scanners that check files for you via an ActiveX control.
What do you think? Are there others who have shunned anti-virus software? How's it working out for you? Can anyone suggest other alternatives, maybe? Maybe a lighter weight anti-virus software that doesn't drop all sorts of DLLs into your system32 dir and place OS hooks everywhere, causing system conflicts? I'm open to suggestions.
