Computer clueless, I need your sage advise!

Hey Guys,

I need your assistance. I currently have Avira Free Edition on my computer and my 9yrs old daughters computer. Do you think I need to upgrade for better protection? If the answer is affirmative, should I get Premium or Suite Protection The computer is used for home office and browsing the net. We both have Windows XP, Service Pack 3 installed.

Any help would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks to all in advance who respond.

Fraternally yours

Jimmy

 

A good option to add is to set your daughter's account to limited user, as opposed to administator.
If you plan to spend money, then you have many options.

 

Many feel that antivirus is the ultimate source of protection but it is totally wrong , wat is more important is a backup and imaging software.

Sir if u r daughter is going just browse the net alone sandboxie would be a good solution.

 

Jimmy,

I would stick with the free version, unless there is already an issue with infections (you can always run an online scanner to double check). I would also recommend using Sandboxie for browsing since it will definitely help protect your computers.

If you are behind a router, you could choose to only run Avira Premium and save some money. Here's a link for a {3 month trial license - please do not link in private promotions, they will be removed - Blue}. I would definitely run it for a while before spending the money:

Good luck.

 

The points above are spot on, but let me expand a bit on each....

• Having a separate user account for your daughter that is a limited user (Start > Control Panel > User Accounts, select desired account name and then Change My Account Type. Naturally, this needs to be done from an Admin level account) deals with the vast majority of pedestrian malware issues. See the Microsoft description here. However, a limited account is of limited use if any user can logon to an Admin level account, so password protecting the Admin level accounts should also be done to remove the temptation from tweaking - even for a young user. You may run into some poorly coded programs that don't run well in a limited environment - it really depends on the applications employed and most applications do work fine. If you do run into this, the SuRun facility will usually allow you to finesse the difficulties. See also SuRun: Easily running Windows XP as a limited user for a more detailed discussion.
• The main things one sacrifices with free edition software are generally usage conveniences and advanced setting options. If Avira free works fine, there should be no real driver to change. Protection for the "average" user is quite good among all the major AV's, with selection often driven by secondary factors (resource footprint on a given machine, compatibility with other software, legacy attachment (and knowing how to quickly navigate the settings), local support needs, and so on). If you go with paid, pay particular attention to vendor license options between product offerings - some now explicitly provide for 1-3 or so users on one license with the incremental cost being almost negligible - note these options sometimes differ between the AV-only and suite-type products - putting a suite on both machines may be cheaper than getting a pair of AV-only licenses for example.
• The need for backup/imaging cannot be minimized, but this is also tied to the usage of the machine. Look at the worst case scenario one could have - say physical failure of the hard drive which requires a new drive to fix - what's lost if you're required to travel this path? In my own case, taking stock of purchased/downloaded music, photos, financial records and so on built the easy case for me providing some focus here. Big/inexpensive external drives and a plan make this easy. On the software side, there are free options here as well.
• Sandboxing or partition/machine virtualization type solutions are both worthwhile and easily understood once you get a hang of the usage paradigm. It might be something to examine down the road if it looks to be useful. This is more likely the case if you frequently stray from mainstream commercial sites, which young users are more likely to do as they navigate down a list of google search results. However, make changes to these systems slowly to assist in the identification of any issues that could crop up, so I'd put anything like this off for a bit. Check out some of the existing discussions:
  • Sandboxie main site and Sandboxie Support Forum
  • Light virtualization: Returnil/PowerShadow/ShadowDefender/ShadowUser Pro
  to get a feel for this style of application before pulling any triggers.

Blue

 

Excellent summarization sir.

 

Another thing to consider, since you have a child, is a parental control tool; for protecting the young eyes from all the nasties in internet.

An excellent tool is the free K9 Web Protection

Panagiotis

 

Another option, instead of running software on the computers, is to use OpenDNS and use their Parental Controls.

 

I think blue summed it all up nice.starting from the desktop and lock it down as much as possiable should always be the first steps then expanding out to the security application and see what fits the best.Also setting time limits with parental controls if applicable something often overlooked by parents.