non techie needs help?

Katrina-trying_to_save!?!

i have a laptop with no security on it and dont know what im meant to look for, plus im a poor student so dont wanna pay for it,:money: lol

what can i do or what should u have on it?

Also can you download powerpoint from anywhere cause my friend give me an office cdrom and it didnt have it on it!??? quite weird i thought..

any help would be appreciated..

webhamster

I belive powerpoint is part of microsoft softawre , so must be purchased unless you can get a student freebie.

As for security , zonalarm for free firewall and avgfree for virus , you may also need antipopup software like weebroot spysweeper.

Or alternatively install ubuntu linux and openoffice , openoffice can handle powerpoint for free.

Seagull

For security you can download the Zonealarm free firewall here.

For Powerpoint compatibility use you can get the free Openoffice here.

ckerrd

What kind of "security" are you after?
Anti virus/spyware stuff?

Or software to lock the pc?

You can download open office https://www.openoffice.org which has a free powerpoint equivalent

Oops sorry beat me to it Seagull/Webhamster

Astaroth

You can only get powerpoint by paying for it.... the viewer is free but the ability to edit it has to be paid for.... it is packaged with some versions of Office or can be bought as a stand alone product.

Alternatively you can download the free Open Office which contains a program similar to powerpoint and is 90% compatable with the powerpoint files (as it is equally compatable to all other "standard" Office programs).

For security there are plenty of decent free firewalls and anti-virus software that can be used but as with most things in life, to some degree you get what you pay for. Generally AVG and AVAST are considered the better free anti-virus software. ZoneAlarm is a good free firewall but I am sure others will recommend others

dounome

http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Spybot_Search_and_Destroy/1043809773/1
http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1
Download these programs for antivirus and anti spyware/adware
Also remember to update as soon as you instal them

cdbrown

I'd recommend trying out an online virus scan prior to installing the virus programs. Some virus (if already resident) can alter virus scanning software to prevent detection. If infected you may not even be able to get to the virus checking websites due to the hijacking nature of some.
Online scanner - http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

tobyosbourn

I would suggest using firefox or opera web browsers as well, far less security holes than IE.

kazap

Check out the sticky in this forum "what security do you use" - have a good read of that - plenty of links to free software

I once wrote a short privacy guide which might be of interest, for example take a look at true crypt for keeping part (or all) of you laptop HD encrypted. This keeps your info private in the event of theft for example.

Cheers.