FW & AV Recommendation for wife's new laptop???

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phkhgh

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Need AV & FW recommendations for wife’s work laptop, given specific wants / needs, free or payed versions.

It’s a new Toshiba w/ Intel T-7100, 2 GB RAM, Vista Home Prem (for now), so power shouldn’t be an issue.

At home, we use Kaspersky AV 7 & ZoneAlarm Pro 7, but I do ALL maintenance / configuration / troubleshooting. I don’t expect doing much of that on her machine. Don’t mind doing initial set up – security prgms, etc. Not sure they are the best for HER (don’t know).

With that in mind, top considerations for her needs are probably:

1) She’s fairly non-tech; not interested in learning intricacies of security software. Can follow instructions (mostly), but not interested in much trouble shooting.
2) Need to have among least problems in their class for interfering w/ other apps.
3) Programs need to be fairly straight forward & effective w/ (mostly) default settings for non – techies; don’t require much tweaking.
4) Probably above avg security effectiveness, but not necessarily “the best.
5) Free is A consideration, but not THE consideration.
6) Mostly, web access will be through corp server, or behind a DSL modem w/ NAT & PAT.

NOD32 tests well & is popular – maybe partly due to price? Some free versions are popular (AVG, Avira, Avast, other) – probably partly due to that. Never used any of them. Not sure if most / any are best choice for her.

Comodo is popular (partly due to $0 ??). There are several other free versions (Outpost, Look n Stop, Jetico, other) also relatively popular – never used any. Not sure if most / any are best choice for HER.


Thanks for comments / suggestions.
 
see this for overview

also get this host.txt file,
then SAVE AS \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
let it overwrite any existing file there.

this will shield you from known exceptionally bad websites with virus/trojan downloads.
 
Daaammmmn, Jobeard. That's quite a mouthful! It's late & no way I'll take it all in now, but will tomorrow.

BTW, I guess technically she's on a network (at work) when accessing web. Other than that, no. At home... guess it is a network. Hadn't really thought about it.
 
VISTA compatible FW for laptop revisited:

Several I've seen mentioned overlooked the fact that many FWs are STILL not Vista ready. As far as I can determine, these do NOT support Vista:
ZoneAlarm Pro (their suite does - don't particularly care for suites; free ZA does - not well reviewed in recent yrs)
Comodo
Kerio

Those would've probably been my top picks.

Couple of points:
MS Vista's FW does NOT rate that well in several tests, esp leak tests, perhaps others. This shouldn't surprise anyone. It also has very poor / limited configurability. Still, it'd be better than nothing...maybe.

McAfee ISS (came on the laptop): Stopped using McAfee yrs ago... now I remember why. Is it EVER irritating. Really, really, really poorly designed UI. Almost IMPOSSIBLE to shut down the AV completely. IMO, compared to ZoneAlarm Pro, it's a joke.

So, still looking!
 
Just use Zone Alarm free,until Comodo or Kerio get their asses into gear.
Vista`s own security will irritate your wife more than any 3rd party FW.

Also, hackers and spyware writers are still working out Vista,along
with FW writers,so there is small window of security there. :D
 
Thanks BC,
That's one option. Unfortunately, ZA Free is nowhere near the product it used to be before they sold out a few yrs ago. Still may be "good enough", but then again...

Who makes (now) the FW for Kaspersky's Internet Security Suite? I read a while back but forgot. I like Kas' AV - used it a good while. If they're using Norton's or McAfee's FW in their product, I'll have to cross it off the list.
 
I think your making too fine a distinction between FWs :)

Just about any half decent FW will stop things coming in
and going out.

Spyware,viruses,and hackers only require the user to
be ignorant of basic net savvy.

Be careful what you download,and what you click on.

Use Firefox/Opera.
 
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