How to protect a new laptop 30 June 2009 at 10:56PM in Techie Stuff 7 replies 545 views

wazza

Sister is taking delivery of a new Dell laptop which has Vista Home installed. I want to download free software to protect it. Do not want to use McAfee or Norton which normally comes installed on the laptop. Thinking of using the following...

Zonealarm

AVG

Spybot - search and destroy

AdAware

Spyblaster

I have been using the above on a XP home laptop for 3 years without any problems.

Will the above work perfectly with Vista Home? Do you recommend anything else?

Thanks in advance for the replies

Freegan

COMODO

They do all the security software you need for free.

Firewall, Antivirus, Email filtering, Memory Firewall and System Cleaner to name the few I remember.

Regular free updates to the virus database and the software (when needed).

They make their money from the commercial versions they produce but their philosophy is that if there are fewer infected domestic PCs around then the safer their commercial customers' PCs are.

I've been using virtually their entire freeware suite of products for a couple of years now and I've only been seriously infected once and that was down to me being inattentive.
COMODO saved my bacon, rooting it out, quarantining it and sending it back to COMODO Labs for analysis.

Whenever I double check my system with any other reputable security product I come up squeaky clean.

diable

Tell her not to turn it on.

daily_2

router
avira or avast.
windows firewall
malwarebytes
firefox with noscript, adblock plus, betterprivacy
mvps host file.
ccleaner and jkdefrag for maintenance.

(ZA/Spybot/adaware/comodo/avg are all bloated apps that will hit performance with little benefit)

pstones578

wazza wrote: »

Sister is taking delivery of a new Dell laptop which has Vista Home installed. I want to download free software to protect it. Do not want to use McAfee or Norton which normally comes installed on the laptop. Thinking of using the following...

Zonealarm

AVG

Spybot - search and destroy

AdAware

Spyblaster

I have been using the above on a XP home laptop for 3 years without any problems.

Will the above work perfectly with Vista Home? Do you recommend anything else?

Thanks in advance for the replies

I'd get a hardware firewall/router and also install Firefox.

wazza

Thanks for the replies. Forgot to mention that i always use firefox.

dave08

Uninstall most of the bundle software they put on it. Use AVG or Avast!.

Firefox is a good choice also.

andy2004

i;d forget about adaware and go straight for malwarebytes personally, and some sought of image backup software to make a backup image of the boot partition. quicker recovery than reinstalling.
something you can use once a week.

list of the freeones here http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml
DriveImage XML is probably the best one in the list though i have never use it myself,