Even Abnormal People Can Be Troubled

An article I could have written, that says things I have said:

What do normal people do about their computers?

Link received in e-mail from a friend of mine who was astonished by this bit:

I don’t use an anti-virus product at all, and have not for years. They just slow down the system and get in the way when I try to install my own stuff. I’ve never gotten a virus, presumably because I know better than to execute one.

But I’m not normal. Given that you’re reading this, you’re probably not normal either. What works for us does not work for folks who just want the computer to be an appliance, not a working tool in a career.

That’s been me.  I didn’t explicitly set out to avoid AV software on my machine, but I ended up that way, and share his sentiments about having the system slowed.  Norton seems to have become increasingly a problem rather than a protection.

Interesting piece, anyway.  I find myself pondering the question of what normal people do regularly, because I am one of those who rescue them.  How can you justify spending several hours making a machine that’s nearly disposable in cost function correctly?

1. Amen to those last 2 paragraphs in the article.  Startup programs are the bane of my existence!

   Posted by caltechgirl  on  01/12  at  04:26 PM

2. I have never run AV software.. Its horrible.
   Talk about machine hijacking.
   I’ve gotten a couple of viruses over the years.
   One of them was from others using my computer.
   The other was just one of those things.. it happens.
   I use an online virus scanner every now and then to check my machine..
   I use msconfig to check whats on the start up list and disable anything I don’t need.

   Thats how I do it..

   Posted by Wayne  on  01/12  at  04:40 PM

3. Techno-tard here with a question.

   We use WindowsXP and MSN Dialup. We don’t use the computer for a business, but we do some banking and bill-paying online. We’re extremely careful about our email...never open anything from anyone we don’t know. MSN/Hotmail and GMail both seem to have a pretty good handle on spam, anyway.

   I’ve noticed that the Norton stuff that we have installed DOES seem to really put a kink in the ole system. Do we really need it?

   Posted by Pammy  on  01/12  at  11:37 PM

4. Yeah, I had Norton on my old computer, and Norton in itself was almost as bad as a virus. I remember one time after I installed a program update, I could no longer get online. Went via another computer to the Norton site, where they made a mumbled admission, “Oh, yeah, if you have such-and-such kind of system, this latest update will render it incapable of getting on the Internet”; along with a completely non-obvious fix for the problem, something I never would’ve figured out on my own in 100 years.

   These last couple of years, I’ve had no problems with viruses, and I’ve had no problems with Norton or any other AV software. Of course, I took the geekly route: my new computer uses Linux.

   Posted by Paul Burgess  on  01/13  at  09:13 AM

5. I’m with Paul on the Linux thing.  If you can’t go that far, at least use Firefox and Thunderbird instead of Internet Explorer and Outlook.

   Posted by Will  on  01/13  at  11:10 AM

6. On the other hand, if you do use Norton Anti Virus, disable auto protect, and just let it run once a week.  It’s the closest thing to having complete protection without totally sacrificing performance.

   Posted by Will  on  01/13  at  11:15 AM

7. If I were the only user of the machines here at home I might consider doing without AV software. But since I share computers with my wife and 11-year old son, that ain’t gonna happen. Mostly I set it up to do a weekly virus scan on my personal machine and active protection with twice weekly scans on the other machine(s). For this I use McAfee.

   I’ve had too many bad experiences with Norton, particularly of the “Norton crashed/got corrupted and won’t let me do anything and when I uninstalled it my machine would’t boot anymore” type. I told one friend whose machine I resurrected after such an occurence that if she re-installed Norton I wouldn’t come back to fix her problems any more.

   Posted by  on  01/16  at  01:02 PM

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