Windows 7 Free Anti-Virus .vs. Purchased Anti-Virus

I have Windows 7 and so they don't have Outlook Express on Windows 7 as Outlook Express is only for Windows XP. But they do have Windows Live Mail that replaces Outlook Express and that can be used in Windows Vista and Windows XP as well. Windows Vista does not have Outlook Express,either. On Windows Vista,Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express but all of these email clients,including several others like,SeaMonkey Mail,Thunderbird and Zimbra Desktop,are all the same.

They have the same system as Outlook Express does. They ask you for your POP server and all of that. And as I explained in the other posts,I and most people don't know that.

But I have found some of my posts about the email clients quite funny and charismatic. And that quote from my friend when I asked him about the email clients. Him saying " You can't use it. It won't let you use it." And " It does not allow itself to be used." When I told my other friends in the pub,that phrase they cold not stop laughing either. Like I could not. And they cannot use that email either.

So it seems that I am not the only one,and my friend who quoted those words above,has a way with words.

But not everyone sees the funny side of it. On the Linux Mint forums for example-see here-http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&p=397456 http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&p=397456 [/COLOR]

And I also think that on Linux sites or forums they don't like Windows anyway or someone saying,Windows is better than Linux. More or less,well it is better than Linux. Because Linux is not user friendly like Windows is.

And on Linux you have to log in with a password and enter it every time you make any changes on your computer. But on Windows you don't have to have a password if you do not want one. So I don't have a password.

But I never found out how to remove of my password on Linux- see post here from Linux Mint forums-Linux Mint Forums • View topic - How can I remove my linux Mint password? And as you can see they locked the thread on Linux Mint forums. Despite the fact that the other members posts stated that they liked the thread. And mine is the ONLY one that is locked on that site. Nobody else's is.

Are Linux Mint forums trying to tell me something? But from all of my searches on the web and my past experience of Linux(I don't Linux, now and I have uninstalled it from my computer.)It looks like and is that,you cannot remove your password on Linux. It is not like Windows,where you have that choice.

But I don't think that I am missing anything not being able to use the email clients. As I have a Netbook and I think that because,email clients download all of your email onto your hard drive.That would take up a lot of disk space.

But I have never got as far as to worrying about that, as I cannot even get them up and running.

So I am happy to carry on as I am and use normal email. Such as G.Mail or Hotmail on the web. And the chat messengers that I have got. Andrea Borman.
 
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I'd say you are a noob, but i know noobs that would be insulted by that association
 
it's a term used to describe people new to the subject, which I retract as it was a bit of a personal attack rather than a useful comment pertaining to the subject matter.
 
I would encourage everyone who has been a part of this thread to avoid personal attacks and stick to the issues. Andrea is clearly writing from the perspective of someone who may have extremely differential viewpoints from that of mainstream computer users, experts, and professionals. This site is full of members from all walks of life, and who have many different proficiency levels. Therefore, it is inappropriate, even if we disagree with something, that we resort to what may be construed as a rude, ill-mannered, or personal attack. It is degrading to the original poster, and reflects poorly on the person writing it. It is fine to attack the merits of someone's technical claims, but not the person themselves. Unfortunately, this thread has been filled with many assessments of the person's computer knowledge and character, and not necessarily why, constructively, the poster may be wrong in their assertions.

As it is the job of all staff members to encourage healthy debate, and not a debate that becomes personal, I urge everyone involved in this thread to remain polite to each other and extend to each other the common courtesy that we would all like to be extended. In essence, our policy has always asked to treat others the way you would want to be treated.

Thank you.
 
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I admit it. I am not a computer expert, but then most people are not. But I think that I know enough to get by with using the computer on Windows. So I can use a Windows computer and maintain it by doing basic tasks. That is install updates and upgrade my web browsers when they update Chromium for example.

But if I had to use a Linux computer,that is a different story. As Linux is not user friendly and very difficult to use. So I can only really just browse the web on there and install software that is listed in the package manager. But if I had to do tasks on Linux to maintain my computer. I would be in trouble, as that is just too complicated on Linux.

But it's not like that on Windows. That's why I stay with Windows,which is better than Linux anyway. I like Windows,especially Windows 7,the newest version,which is the easiest version to use.

But my only experience I have had of the other versions of Windows,Windows XP and Windows Vista are in the Internet cafes. Where they still have them. But I have never used them at home, but from what I have seen of Windows XP and Windows Vista. Is that you can use them and they seemed to be user friendly. But not as user friendly or as easy to use as Windows 7 is.

But I have got Windows 7,so I have got the right operating system it seems. I don't use Linux anymore, as I uninstalled that a few months ago. Because all I was doing was browsing the web with it, and you can do that on Windows.

So I am staying with Windows. Andrea Borman.
 
well thats certainly something i agree with, linux is or was (not sure on the current distros) a pain to use with it being too open to be modified... although many swear by it for network servers and the like, my personal test was back when red hat linux was just out, and it was a total shock at having to do so much work to get a simple task to do something. Linux has likely evolved a lot, i hope one day it might unseat the big players, but I just view it as where the hardcore geeks get thier kicks from.
 
You do not need to be a computer expert to use this site.

I do not view Windows to be entirely better than Linux at certain things (opinion). Linux is great for a lot of hosting needs and scalability. In this case, Microsoft is playing a bit of catch-up with their tablet and phone operating systems to make the kernel similar to the Windows kernel. Hopefully the result of this is Windows 8.

Up until what I believe what was Windows 2000/Windows XP, Windows still employed command-line tools based on FreeBSD. While not Linux, this was one of the operating systems descendant from original UNIX platform operating systems by Bell Labs and AT&T.

For those of us who seldom have issues with Windows, I believe the main annoyance is now the need to reboot. This has been improved drastically in Windows Server. Not so much in Windows 7. I shouldn't have to reboot after updates, and its always hoped that this is something they will address in a future release. With Windows Server, they've come a long way.

For web hosting, Linux has some major advantages. Theres commercial packages for web management (WHM/cPanel). Red Hat was arguably the best distribution until they started charging for updates. This was solved by developers invoking the GNU license and creating the CentOS distribution. As someone who is very familiar with PHP/JavaScript/HTML I can look at this and honestly say that this is a solid solution for properly creating a business website or creating entire web hosting services. Database support in Linux is arguably very good, and those of us who have been working the web for a long time are more comfortable with PHP than ASP as a processing language/extension for HTML. LiteSpeed and LiteHTTP are vast improvements over Apache and even Apache makes Microsoft's IIS look silly by comparison. For hosting wide area network services, I will always prefer Linux: complex, low cost, secure. But thats whats needed.

When looking at business environments that need to focus solely on productivity and ease of use: Windows Server and Windows 7 client are where it is at. So I see the good and bad in both. It is a mistake to write-off Linux, but these days you can host nearly any OS in a VM. The only OS I do not take seriously is Mac OS. There is always that one employee or client that has an entire office of Windows computers and demands to use an expensive $2,000 iMac. With $2,000 I could build the guy a Windows computer with a 6-core i7, 24+ GB of DDR3 1600, and the latest, most powerful graphics and physics card. With the iMac you'll get a dual core processor and a OS that can't run anything except Adobe products, AutoCAD software, and Maya. I just find it to be a big waste of resources to actually buy a Mac and probably always will. Their desire to move to IBM-compatible architecture is a sign that their platform was a failure. They wanted to give their customers the ability to dual boot into Windows to sell more units... its just a reality.

For productivity its Windows for me... for Internet-based server solutions I will quietly use Linux.

These are all opinions, of course, and to each his own.
 
Must agree to the Mac comments, I often think the whole apple product range has that "i" before the names to merely flog cheap rubbish to rich willing fools that think price = quality if they see a bit of marketing that makes them feel above everyone that doesn't own said product, or ones of other brands. In the real world Microsoft might not be the clear winner but the hardware makers are making it the success on price and performance.
 

So I am not the only one who does not find Linux user friendly? I have found that Linux is very slow. Unlike Windows which is very fast.

The biggest problem with many brands of Linux was I that I could not connect to the Internet with wireless broadband,only with wired broadband.

And another thing I did not like about Linux is that you have to log in with a password. And enter it every time you install software from the package manager and make changes to your computer. And that was one big pain in the neck and there is no way to remove or disable the password.

But on Windows you don't have to have a password if you do not want one. And talking about passwords, was that on the few brands of Linux that I could connect by wireless broadband. Every time my computer booted into Linux,I got this annoying pop up. Saying" the keyring did not get unlocked. Please enter keyring password."

They mean the wireless key to connect to the Internet. So I had to keep doing that as well,in addition to entering my Linux password.

Now,when you first set up Windows,it only asks for your wireless key ONCE and one only. After that it does not ask you for it again. You only have to enter your wifi password the first time you set up your Internet connection. Unless you are connecting to another Internet service provider. But even then you only have to do that for the first time set up.

For example,some people have more than one Internet service provider. And so if you set up Internet connection A,for the first time, you would enter your wireless password once. And after that you do not have to enter it again,it connects you automatically.

And if you were setting up Internet connection B,for the first time, you would only have to enter the wireless password once for that as well. After that when you boot into Windows,it just connects you to a automatically-no need to enter the password again. And if you wanted to use your other Internet connection-you just click on connection B-and it connects you automatically. No need to enter your password again as you already did this the first time you set it up.

But this did not happen on Linux at all,as I explained. And also it is difficult to install software outside the package manager on Linux from the Internet. As when you download it,it does not end up on your desktop or start menu like on Windows.

It only installs as a file. So on Linux basically,if the software you want is not in the package manager, then you cannot have it.

And sometimes the package manager is not even working properly. And you cannot even open some of the files and access the settings on Linux. As they are security protected. On Linux you don't control your own computer,the operating system controls it.

But on Windows YOU control your computer not the operating system. And YOU control how you want Windows to run. You can choose to have high,low or no security settings on Windows. And of course you don't have to have a password either.

And because I live on my own and nobody else uses my computer, I don't need a password and I dislike security settings. And I don't have an anti-virus program,as I don't believe in them. As I think they try to take over your computer.

So I don't have a password and User Account Control is disabled. And Windows Update is set to never install updates. Which means that I install the updates in my own time manually,and choose which ones I want or don't want.

This way of running my computer suits me but if I had a public computer. Like people who run an office or an Internet cafe. Then you would have to set up passwords and an anti-virus program. Because then everybody uses the computers. And if I shared my computer with friends or other members of a household. Then I would need to set up a password.To stop other people from logging into my Windows account and changing the computer settings.

But nobody else uses my computer except me and I never take it out of the house. So it is unlikely that anybody can hack my computer.

I have heard that there is going to be Windows 8. And on one Linux forum one user thinks that they could introduce the system,where you have to have a password,on Windows 8.

But if that is the case,then I won't upgrade to Windows 8. I will stay on Windows 7,where I don't have to have a password. As I hate having to use a password on my own computer. Andrea Borman.
 
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Andrea Borman said:
So I am not the only one who does not find Linux user friendly? I have found that Linux is very slow. Unlike Windows which is very fast.
Click to expand...

Linux lacks Windows technologies that many modern graphics cards take advantage of, including DirectX. This is because DirectX is proprietary software. The desktop environment loading slow may be what you are referring to. These desktop environments attempt to emulate the look and feel of Windows and the graphical user interfaces that existed prior to Windows in order to avoid people getting thrown into a command console. The fact that this is slow to load is very likely due to a lack of hardware acceleration/optimization. It is safe to say that when Gnome/KDE/whatever GUI is loading, a lot of stuff is going on here.

Also, how you optimized your Linux install has a lot to do with how slow/fast it seems to be. You may have had many services running in the background for hosting file servers, web servers, databases, and all sorts of things that you did not need for a simple desktop environment. Linux has been pre-loaded onto netbooks because it requires less RAM than Windows and the lack of licensing fees allowed companies like Dell to sell it dirt cheap.

The biggest problem with many brands of Linux was I that I could not connect to the Internet with wireless broadband,only with wired broadband.
Click to expand...

Most distributions of Linux support wireless, but again, it is a cat and mouse game to get networking configured properly if you don't know what you are doing. This is one of the biggest failures of Linux, and unless you're someone who is obsessed with this OS, you will be willing to admit that Windows is many times easier to set up and configure than a Linux desktop. Compared to the state Linux was in back in the 90s, I would say it has improved significantly. But getting things to work the way you are discussing is a big complaint among reasonable individuals.


This is for security reasons and the way Linux handles security. Windows NT and later actually borrows security ideas from Linux, in the way the NTFS file system bases security settings on user and group permissions. It is important to understand that Microsoft abandoned the Windows 98-style architecture in favor of the Windows NT model after the success of Windows 2000 and failure of Windows ME (Millennium Edition). This prompted a change in security and the hiring of Dave Cutler to develop Windows NT. Security settings currently found in both Windows and Linux have become very similar. The advantage of Linux has been to allow hundreds of users to access the same machine at the same time, with access permissions being segmented/separated. Most modern distributions of Linux require a password to avoid the security implications of not having one. Indeed, it is still recommended you have a password in Windows. You may have noticed that Terminal Services in Windows allows for multiple users to be logged into the same server environment (in some cases desktop environment running off server). This is similar to what Linux has always had.


This is likely a misconfiguration and the result of a poor installer, something Linux distributions are famous for. People installing Linux seem to almost be expected to know what every single package being installed does, and to a great extent have intermediate to advanced knowledge of the operating system distribution. This is a failing on the part of Linux to allow people who are not technically proficient to properly use the operating system without extensive configuration, reading up on manuals and technical documents, and preparing for hours on how to go about setting up their system. Never mind security hardening and other tasks that go along with making Linux run great.


You have to understand that you are dealing with an entirely different operating system when you are using Linux. It was never designed to be some desktop operating system that people install to get work done, until it was collectively decided to move it into that direction. Prior to the advent of high-speed Internet, people connected into Linux machines as gateways for things like PPPoE (dial-up over Ethernet) to get on the Internet. Linux machines were always used for taking on server roles. Linux is used, to this day, to host enormous databases in the government and private sector. Using it as a desktop friendly environment for someone who is familiar only with Windows is an enormous learning curve - no matter what anyone says. This does not mean Linux cannot be used as a desktop OS, it just means that you're going to encounter roadblock after roadblock to turn it into something, that fundamentally, it really wasn't designed to be. With Windows 7 (which descends all the way back to Windows 2000 and Windows NT - which were server operating systems!), we are looking at a client operating system that is designed to connect to a server. At the same time, an enormous amount of research and development has gone into Windows to make it user-friendly, to make sure that it is easy to install, run and operate. So you must see the upside and downside to both. Linux is a powerful tool for people who know a lot about computers. You can host streaming audio and video with a few command-line parameters, compile and modify the source code of applications, and do a lot in this environment. I view it as an excellent hosting environment. Windows has the edge as a desktop operating system because it always was meant to be the OS everyone can install in their home. It is single-handedly responsible for people buying a computer and putting it in their house. Linux and UNIX-derivative operating systems were always the operating systems working in the background. Most web servers on the Internet are hosted under Linux, and from some research I saw a few years ago, this included servers at Microsoft itself.

Understanding the history of how Windows, UNIX, and Linux developed will give you a good idea of why you have experienced these issues. I would recommend looking up Dave Cutler to find out why Windows survived "Millennium Edition" and changed drastically after Windows 98.
 
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Mike
You're wasting your time trying to help her. Several others have tried helping her on Linux and other things. She only seems interested in posting her opinion and having the last word. She hijacked this thread from antivirus to Outlook and now to Linux again.
Joe
 
Hee! Hee! I love a good cat fight! Topic hijacking will do it every time.

But, before the blood starts flowing, let me give just one observation ON TOPIC.

I use AVG and ONLY AVG. I install the FREE version for all my customers and on my own PC's except for my Main System, which I'm on right now, and since I need the ultimate protection for this PC, I use a whole 'Package" of anti-malware software and AVG 2010 PRO, leads the pack.
The Anti-virus engine in the FREE version is exactly the same one in the PRO version. The free version will automatically update once every day, but in the pro version I can set it to update hourly, if I want. (personally, I feel like that's overkill, so I set it to update every four hours).

So I advise anyone who is unsure about free protection vs paid protection, it depends a lot on the company involved, but at least with AVG there is really NO difference, as far as the basic Anti-Virus protection is concerned.
 

Thank you for trying to explain about how Linux runs Mike. But I don't understand any of the high tech phrases in this post or any high tech issues about Linux for that matter. I only understand that Linux was not user friendly for me. And hard to use.

And it is worth me mentioning that I did not install the Linux brands that I tried by using a USB stick or CD. I used virtual clone drive and mounted the ISO CD file on that. And the Windows installer finished the installation. I got the idea from this website-Link Removed The How To Geek website.

So Linux Mint was installed alongside Windows using the Mint 4 Windows Installer. So it could be uninstalled in the programs menu on Windows. Which I did uninstall because it was not very good. The other Linux brands were also installed the same way that Linux Mint was.

But I don't understand the high tech issues behind Linux. So it does seem that Linux is not for the majority of people who are average computer users. And what is Direct X 11 which you mentioned and what does it do? My computer said I have got this on my Windows 7. Andrea Borman.
 
Andrea,
Please don't go off topic. This thread is intended to discuss a Antivirus. So stay in that topic if you want to discuss any thing else create a new thread. ​
 
[MSE]Microsoft Security Essentials is fine.
I don't use a anti-virus on my main computer because no one else touches it, but I use MSE on any others and it is fine.
Granted, I could get one without downloading but that is a different topic.
 
Just because no one else touches your computer does not mean that you cannot get infected. One wrong click on a hi jacked web page or just one wrong click and Bingo your infected.
 
*sigh*
I recall saying "Granted, I could get one without downloading but that is a different topic."
I don't think of myself as a god.
 
Suit yourself but Andrea just stepped in it Link Removed If you're connected to the web you're vulnerable without AV.
Joe
 
Joe S said:
Suit yourself but Andrea just stepped in it Link Removed If you're connected to the web you're vulnerable without AV.
Joe
Click to expand...

Hi-Joe-you will be happy to know and so am I-That I downloaded Malwarebytes and scanned all of my Netbooks. And it said I have no viruses or malware on any of my Netbooks.

And I also reported that site that redirected to the blank page that scanned my computer to both Google and Yahoo. And I telephoned Google and Yahoo customer services as well an told them on the phone.

But Yahoo emailed me saying that it was my computer that was the problem not the website link.

But I told them I tried it on my friends computers,the office computers and my friend in America tried it on his. And the same thing happened on all the computers. And I told them, that it is very unlikely that over 10 computers,all in different locations and on different networks are all infected with a computer virus or malware.

I suppose the search engines are just covering themselves and do not want to admit that they made the mistake of providing the link.

But the good news is that I have got NO COMPUTER VIRUSES and so my computer is in the clear.

And the website owner emailed me to tell me that their website WAS hijacked by a computer hacker who redirected their link to some where else. But the problem has been sorted out. And so it was never my computer or anyone else's computer that was the problem.

But the Malwarebytes scan proved that both my Windows Defender and MRT scans were right,that I had no viruses. But once I had had the scan I uninstalled the Malwarebytes.

Because I just don't like anti-virus programs on my computer.I don't feel comfortable with them. But even if I had the strongest anti-virus program. It does not stop you clicking on website links or the links from redirecting. So it would have happened anyway. Andrea Borman.
 
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