Nanogrip

Yeah I tried Panda as well years ago. It also sucked, and even left behind/allowed some residue of some bug behind that was caught with a better antivirus.

Arklon

The best anti-virus is being smart about what files you allow to get on your computer. AV programs just suck the shit out of your system's performance. Firewalls, though, are even more pointless... as long as your computer's exposed to the internet, there's a way to compromise your computer, period.

lyla

Lucky most of you firewall nay-sayers are behind a hardware firewall on your hub...otherwise you would know their value is more than nothing or pointless.

"""as long as your computer's exposed to the internet, there's a way to compromise your computer, period."""

Surely it is better to only have 0-5 ways to penetrate your computer rather than 5000. /boggle.

Cannyone

Hmmmm..... I guess I'm lucky I had to format that installation and reinstall from scratch.

I did notice there was something it had left behind (In my Registry). During startup I'd get this message about a program not being able to run because it wasn't installed??? Still that doesn't mean I did a clean reinstall to eliminate something Panda left behind. Instead I installed a couple of brand new hard drives. Seems like the MBR was on what the motherboard/OS thought should have been "C:" (instead of what I thought was "C:" drive). The result was that none of the tricks to fix the MBR worked. I mean it's not like the motherboard makes have to supply clear documentation (drive assignment was not clearly labeled), or that when I called a "Tech Support" person that he really needed to have a clue! (He told me something that was wrong because that information was not in the manual... go figure!)

(See I had 3 identical drives installed before... so I couldn't tell one from the other in BIOS - When I installed I told Vista to use the drive I had labeled for it. And I was none the wiser... until the other day!)

The "Silver Lining" to the situation is that I now know without a doubt that C: drive is the "0" drive on the controller and that all of the boot files are in fact installed on that drive. Which will save me serious headaches in the future. The serendipitous element is that Panda was fully deleted. And while Kapersky is not as frugal with system resources as NOD32 was, hopefully it will provide superior protection.

zme-ul

you say hardware firewall like's a wonder out there
instead "hardware firewalls" are just MIPS32/64 CPUs heavily software dependable (user created instructions sets)
thus a "hardware firewall" is as good as the program

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mkey

He only wanted to say that people often don't even know what systems are between them and the www nor do they know on what basis those systems operate.

lyla

Indeed, I was pointing out that probably a vast majority of the "na na na na na, I dont need a firewall, it does nothing, I havnt had any attacks", are probably behind a firewall as most hubs come with one, and its default settings are sufficient. Now I know when I had my firewall completely open and I was in safe mode with no antivirus/software firewall up, I had a virus injected into my system in under 5 minutes. So....be glad you have a firewall you are clueless about before you say they have zero value.

Concepts

I have been using Nod32 for the almost 2 years now. My sub is going to be expiring soon but I doubt I will continue using it as it has it's problems with certain apps like steam where I have to put it in the allow list under exceptions for steam to run properly. They still have not fixed this problem in V4 apparently.

I tried Norton Gaming Edition and was pretty impressed with it. Takes practically no resources to run now. I must say Norton has come a long ways over the years and I may switch. I'm still debating at this point.

I like Avira as well and it's probably the best free Antivirus around in my opinion.

DOOMJESUS

oh sure, you were just testing your dmz. how clueless does one have to be to plug directly into the internet?

who hasn't been using some kind of hard gateway since we got high bandwidth connections in our homes? has it been ten years yet?

"injected"?...

lyla

I was proving a point to a friend, and injected is a pretty accurate description.

and why I told that story was due to "Firewalls, though, are even more pointless" even though as you say pretty much everyone has one...