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Ask Slashdot: Actual Best-in-Show For Free Anti Virus?

Posted by samzenpus on from the good-and-cheap dept.

First time accepted submitter paperclipman writes "I'm on the college student budget and want to make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while. I like to think of myself as a reasonably competent CPU user so I'm no adventurous link-clicker, but I do download some music as a recent SoundCloud devotee. My Kaspersky antivirus will be expiring shortly and I don't particularly care to renew with that steep of a fee — any advice from fellow thrifts?"

7 of 515 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Funny

    I like to think of myself as a reasonably competent CPU user

    What the hell does that even mean? Do you mean computer?

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Huh? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's a reasonably competent CPU user, but he needs to learn to use his memory, especially the part remembering all the acronyms out there.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Your post reads like bad market research by discord5 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have you tried Common Sense 2012? I hear it works well in most sensible cases. Other than that on the cheap : Microsoft Security Essentials. It seems a bit contradictory to let MS handle anti-virus software, but at least it doesn't hog your system as badly as most other products.

    reasonably competent CPU user

    Yes, I know how you feel. I like to think of myself a I/O aficionado. I have a friend who's a memory expert. We know a guy who was pretty much a BIOS guru, but he's not feeling too well lately after hearing about the UEFI thing.

    but I do download some music as a recent SoundCloud devotee

    I hardly know anyone who downloads their music from SoundCloud. Most tracks are either demos (with a link to itunes, amazon, juno or whatever). And the few amateurs that are serious about their music have already joined one of the many netlabels where you can usually download entire albums from their own site or bandcamp.

    Are you by any chance doing market research, trying to infiltrate into the tech crowd while looking young, hip, dynamic and social 2.0 web networking? You're doing a splendid job, I might add. However, please forgive my sarcasm if you're not, your post seems to read like a 55 year old police officer going under cover "buyin' da ganja mon, totally down with da 'erb an' ting".

    1. Re:Your post reads like bad market research by sootman · · Score: 3, Funny

      55? Oh my gracious no, double that. If you have a moment, I highly recommend you re-read the original post while imagining Mr Burns' voice.

      > I like to think of myself a I/O aficionado.
      > I have a friend who's a memory expert.

      If I drank coffee, you'd owe me a new keyboard and/or screen. :-)

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      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  3. Slashdot is missing something by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Where is my mycleanpc spam?

  4. Re:Avira or AVG by Finallyjoined!!! · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'm in the market for a replacement for AVG

    In the market to spend what? Fuck all?

    Guess you're after real value for your money, oh wait!

    --
    If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
  5. Re:Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Uh oh, sounds like you might have an infection that's sapping your performance. Might need to get a third antivirus program and install it alongside the other two. Make sure you leave realtime scanning on so that all three of them get a good look at every file that the system is opening and closing behind the scenes. Surely one of them can identify the rogue files.

    Good luck!