Do I actually need an Antivirus on my netbook?

Of course, NAV is very light. Another option to consider is DefenseWall and Panda Cloud.

 

Whether or not you need an AV on your netbook depends on how well you back up important data IMO, how critical the data is, and the extent of your security/performance demands. Browsing safely online as a limited user account and SRP will be extremely secure. On this type of setup I'd consider an AV program a small layer of security, but a layer of security nonetheless, and as long as you kept all programs up to date either manually or with secunia (http://secunia.com/) I think you'd be good to go.

Problem with AV on a netbook, or any computer I guess, is when you want a light setup no matter how light the AV is on ram, its real time scanner still scans every single read/write on the machine. This is kills netbooks with 5400rpm drives IMO.

Online scans are a great option, but if an infection prevented internet access, then having an AV installed would be handy.

This is what I've done on my system: as admin install MSE as normal, msconfig and uncheck MSE, in search box access system services with ' services.msc ' hit enter, disable the ' microsoft antimalware service '. There are still a couple of MSE startup items that will in startup that you can untick using autoruns ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx)

After you reboot there will be no processes, services, or anything running from MSE. You can switch to your admin account when you want to run a scan, enable the MSE service, update MSE and run a scan whenever you want, then re-disable the service and untick the MSE entries in autoruns, reboot and its completely disabled. I like MSE's detection & removal capabilities and having at least an AV installed so I don't completely rely upon online scanners.

BTW, I previously used a similar process with AVG, but AVG had several services & startup items to disable, and had about 9 entries hidden in autoruns compared to 2 in MSE (one for MSE and on for the right click 'scan on contect feature), also MSE only requires 1 service to run, making it a very light light program even with its default configuration when compared to other scanners.

 

@ captainron

I now have the Eset Online Scanner installed. They have two versions: One is ActiveX and runs in Internet Explorer, the other one can be downloaded and installed locally. I got the second version. For pure on demand scanning this seems to be the lightest and ideal solution for me. Once in a while I do a scan with it.

BTW, the netbook HD is only 4.200 rpm, so performance really is an issue. I will upgrade it with an SSD when they get a bit cheaper.

 

I use Panda Cloud along with a bunch of freeware applications Malwarebytes Antimalware, Super Antispyware Free Edition, A-Squared Free Edition and Spyware Blaster and have a hardware firewall along with Windows Firewall on my Compaq Mini 110c with 2GB ram. Using Firefox 3.6 RC1 as my default browser along with the various extensions available. Need a light alternative for a firewall which is easy to configure and not so complex like Online Armor Free!

 

Why is that please?

 

well if by hardware firewall he meant a router then yes it will be useless since ur most likely not gunna stay in 1 spot with a netbook, but if its one of those attachable hardware firewalls that u can take around with u, then that wuld work fine.

 

of course

have not heard of these

 

Linksys has some of those. I have a few for my laptops it acts like a portable router. And if I remember right they are not that spendy at all and seem to be reliable.

 

My wife has a netbook running W7 starter, atom 1.66ghz and 1gb ram. We run under limited account and use only prevx with safeonline. Then I use around 45% of the ram. When installing NIS2010/ESS4.0 or KIS2010 her machine becomes really slow using around 65-70% of the ram.

I dont think you can find a "suite" that is light enought for theese netbooks. Either expand to the max ram (2gb) or run limited account and something like prevx, pandacloud etc. And run MBAM on demand sometimes.

Cheers!

 

Sorry I meant the routers firewall my wrong! and I have installed Private Firewall v7.0 and liked it a lot light on resources and quite easy to configure.

 

With Win 7 Premium on my netbook, I'm using Hitman Pro free version.

I previously tried NIS 2010 with Win XP, and it was unbearable. It never quits trying to do something. It's not a problem with a fast processor, but it's a big problem with an Atom processor.

With Win XP you need a firewall, and the NIS firewall is superb, but you don't need it with Win 7.

 

avast! 5.0 worked fine on WinXP and Win7. No slowdowns on Aspire One A150.

 

i have pe guard with panda cloud on my netbook............

 

sounds like you got it pretty well figured out, as always, keep a backup strategy in mind too. I might try the Esset on demand scanner, does it have any entries in autoruns or use any memory on startup? With a 4200rpm drive no way would I run a real time scanner so good choice IMO, I too can't wait to try a SSD. I doubt we will have any concern over the performance impact of real time scanners when we all have SSD's.

 

Actually netbook and notebook drives are 5400RPM with 8MB cache.
What affects performance the most is platter density, a bit cache and a little RPM. The higher the platter density, the higher transfer rates. Bigger cache helps to some extent and higher RPM helps decrease latency for random read/write.

If you want more performance in notebook, replace the factory drive with WD Scorpio Black 320GB 16MB or Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB 16MB.
These two are one of the fastest standard drives for notebooks.

 

@ RejZoR

It's a Nokia Booklet. That one has a 1.8 inch 4200 rpm Toshiba. Upgrading with another HD makes not much sense as the 1.8 ones are all slow. An 1.8 SSD would work but they are still quite expensive.

@ capatinron

I have the all important files backed up. On the HD everything important is EFS encrypted and backed up (encrypted) to an NTFS formated USB stick. They are all backed up online as well. Pictures and videos at Flickr, the other stuff at Dropbox. Mails, contacts and calendar are online anyway (Yahoo Mail Plus).

For real time scanning, the locally installed Eset Online Scanner really appears ideal. Even the program icon looks good .