Need Advice Anti-virus for old laptop

Toshiba Satellite laptop, 1.2Ghz, 1G RAM/40 G Hard Drive, Windows XP....works great. Used just for email and surfing the net - should I put Norton Internet Security 2008 on it or will it choke? I bought a multi-pack since this is the 4th computer but I don't know....is there something cheaper and/or better out there for an older machine? Thanks for any advice/suggestions.

 

http://www.avast.com/

It's free & finds things both Norton & McAffee miss.

 

I like AVG, it's free and it works great...

http://free.avg.com/

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Free is always good but....do they really work as well as Norton? No compatibility issues or other problems? Doesn't totally slow the machine down, etc? Works for spyware too?

 

The only slow down I've seen from Avast is when it downloads a new Virus DB. The best advice I can give there is fire up the laptop, login and go get coffee/tea/gin, whatever. By the time you get back it will be all good.

Avast does not tackle spyware as such, for that your better off with SpyBot Search & Destroy (also a freebie) and Lavasoft's AdAware.

Is Avast as good as Symantec & McA? No - it's better. I run it at home (all machines) and we have the enterprise edition at work. On first startup (after uninstalling McA at home and Symantec at work) Avast found problems the other two did not. Also - once a month, put your PC into "Safe Mode" and run Avast in thourough scan mode followed by SpyBot then Adaware.

Note all the products I cite here have both free versions & payfor versions.

 

I'll add my voice for Avast! AV and SpyBot S&D. I've not used AdAware in a while, but when I used it, I liked it too.

I really like that Avast can do bootscans, which not many virus scanners do (AVG doesn't unless the free version got new features).

 

Consumer Reports has this to say:

Adequate protection at no cost:
A free suite

Though lighter in features than most suites, these three online programs will probably suffice if you practice careful computing, and they won’t tax your computer’s resources. The Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic 7 (replaced by Free Antivirus 8, which claims faster scan speed and other enhancements) provides good virus protection. But it might take a bit longer than the best suites to recognize a new virus or might occasionally flag a safe file as a threat. Microsoft Windows Defender, built into the Vista operating system and available as a free download, rivaled the best suites against spyware and adware. SPAMfighter Standard is a very good supplement to the spam filter in your
e-mail application if you require it.
How to choose


Assess your protection needs. The basic protection offered by free software may suffice if everyone with access to your computer follows security-minded practices. These include never downloading software from unfamiliar Web sites and never opening links in e-mail to access personal accounts. The need for additional protection from a high-scoring suite rises if some in your home don’t always practice careful computing.

Your security needs also vary by your computer’s operating system. Apple computers are much less vulnerable to viruses and spyware than PCs, and the spam filter built into Mac OS X version 10.5 worked well in our tests. Among Windows systems, Vista, found on newer PCs, claims to offer greater protection than the older Windows XP. (See An improving picture.)

Get an antispam filter only if the filter provided by your e-mail program or ISP doesn’t block enough unwelcome mail.

Consider performance. Our tests, carried out in our labs and those of another independent testing company, track how rapidly programs address actual threats newly discovered by security researchers.

For several years in our tests, we’ve also modified older viruses, under high-security conditions, to mimic threats too new to have yet been discovered.

The best programs this year detected 80 percent or more of our modified threats and updated their databases within a day or two to detect all the actual threats. The worst program allowed 60 percent or more of the modified viruses to slip by and had not detected most of the actual threats by the end of our test period.

This year, we also tested programs with modified badware (spyware and adware) as well as known malicious files. In addition, we evaluated whether programs wrongly identified benign files as threats, which might prompt you to delete an important e-mail or a system file that your machine needs to operate. Some of the best suites effectively caught malicious files while ignoring benign ones. Other top performers sounded more false alarms than we’d have liked, but we recommend some of them nonetheless. Not many good files were improperly tagged, and a few false positives are often part of the price of optimal protection.

Favor suites over stand-alones. One reason suites do so well, our tests suggest, is that they provide slightly better overall protection against viruses, spyware, and adware than using several programs that each fight a single threat. Some spyware and adware have viruslike characteristics, such as the ability to change your PC’s security settings, and suites seem to detect such hybrid threats better than standalone programs.

Suites offer a single interface that can be simpler to use than a hodgepodge of applications, each of which requires installation and periodic updating. A suite also costs less than buying and annually renewing a full complement of stand-alone commercial programs, and it can be used on as many as three computers in the same household. And it may offer features not found on its stand-alone siblings, such as system cleanup utilities, parental filters, and full-featured file backup capability.

Stand-alone applications may make sense if you’re targeting only one specific type of threat, such as spam.

Consider processing power. Some suites demand more of your computer’s power than others. Machines with less than a gigabyte of memory may run too slowly with such gluttons. Similarly, some programs take longer than others to scan for viruses, spyware, and adware.

Check for incompatibilities. We found some suites easier to install and configure than others. But testing can’t expose every potential problem, such as conflicts between the programs and software you might have on your computer. Also, we don’t rate suites on the quality of their technical support.

Before buying, check software forums, including the security and privacy forum at ConsumerReports.org and those on software vendor Web sites to see if others are having problems that might apply to you. It also pays to read the user reviews on some sites that sell software, such as Amazon.com.

The free software from Avira was recommended.