Want a virus or some malicious spyware? Hang out on Myspace and do some random clicking or open up your friend’s bulletins. Or execute some random Google searches and play the six degrees from their homepage game. I was doing some innocuous research the other day on Orlando nightclubs when a very official looking Microsoft page opened and informed me that my computer had been infected with a virus. I looked up to the address bar and the address seemed legit; a miscorsoft.com extension. The page looked very Microsoft-esque. I clicked the download button and within seconds Avast popped up with a message; something about: did I really want to download the Trojan virus I had just selected or did I want Avast to keep my computer from crashing and me from losing my mind? I chose sanity.
Avast is my computer Superman, saving me when my foolish typing and clicking fingers find malicious information online. The Avast package is a lot like Norton Antivirus, except it is free and it works. Well, it is free for your home, noncommercial use. If you have a network or an office you need to protect then there is a variety of corporate paid packages you should consider, else, get the free home version here http://www.avast.com/.
According to the website Avast was developed in the Czech Republic in 1991 and remains a Czech product, with the home office in Prague. This wonderful product didn’t pop up on my radar until last year when CNET released their 2006 report on the best 20 freeware products available on the net. My Norton subscription has just expired, right after my computer crashed, and I wasn’t inclined to renew a subscription to a service that hadn’t protected me the first time around.
Avast is easy to use. The interface is simple and it updates and scans automatically. In the last year Avast has kept my system fully operational. Since the great crash of 2006 I have a lot of paranoia. My laptop is already two years old so it may kick the bucket at any time. Keeping this in mind I try to be safety conscious. I invested in an external drive with 60 gigs of storage space. Every month I back up all the files I would never want to lose. Documents, music, and photos are the big three. And since my computer begins to run very slowly when I use it to store more than 20 albums at a time, I keep almost all my music on the external drive. Since the external hard drive is a USB device I can easily access and use the stored files, almost as if they were on my laptop’s hard drive. When I am working on term papers or presentations, I store the drafts after I have worked on them. The lesson here is back up your files. Computers can be replaced. The term paper that you have due tomorrow is going to ruin your mental stability if your computer goes down and you lose your files.
My paranoia extends beyond backing up my files into having an entire cadre of anti-virus software, all of it freeware. Ad-Aware remains a great tool for cleaning out cookies and miscellaneous junk that websites like to litter in my temp files. Ad-Aware also has paid components, but you can get the basic program for free here: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/.
That’s all for this week, happy computing.
If you have a favorite web application or gadget, email me at cbatson@mail.ucf.edu or leave a message!
(I'm working on incorporating images into the weekly blogs...this week I was thwarted by an internal problem with Blogger. Next week I promise some visuals!)
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