[PLUG] Winders Security Software Recommendations

[Mike De La Mater]

On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 00:44, Jason Van Cleve wrote:
> Sorry if this is a tad OT, but I need some quick advice from you network admins.  What are the going recommendations for firewall software and virus software, on Windoze boxen.  This is for an extremely end-user demographic--farmers on dial-up, in fact--so it has to be easy to install.  (And hardware firewalls are out, because these people could never be persuaded to buy one.)  Probably around 50% Win98 and 50% XP.

It's more on-topic than some things I've seen here lately...

> I'm thinking Zone Alarm and McAffee, so correct me if that is not up-to-date:  for all I know, XP comes with a firewall.

I'll go halfway with you on that one. ZoneAlarm does a pretty good job,
but gets tight when "upgraded", even blocking out all traffic in one
case for me. It's great for the price.

After using McAffee for years I got too irritated with their poor
customer service. I've wasted too much money on online upgrades that
didn't work to be happy any more. Customer service at McAffee hasn't
been willing to refund for non-working upgrades, either. I'm very happy
with the Symantec product, either SystemWorks or just the antivirus,
they both work well, update definitions in the background and are easily
renewed annually.

That's what I do, anyway.

-- 
Mike De La Mater
Small Business Networks and Computers
Your key to technology that works
mikedela at ipns.com
503-702-6749