Anti virus/malware

I went with Microsoft Security Essentials on your recommendation a few months ago, and it seems to be a real good program. (at least so far as a caveman like me can tell anyhoo) Oddly, neither it, malware bytes, nor windows update (which I leave set on "automatic") detected a swack of bad-guys that I just ended up manually killing with windows update. Maybe because they were almost exclusively targeting Vista. (which I'm stuck with for now)

Yeah I think 98 was leaps and bounds better than anything that's followed. If they hadn't discontinued service for it I never woulda changed. Eventually I got to like XP which I think was the best since 98, but it too is/was facing the same fate. No more service updates.
Sad too, as anyone knows it's all just a scummy cash grab trying to make folks keep buying their new crap if they wanna be safe. (at least that's what they preach)

As far as the antivirus is concerned, I've used a few free ones over the years, and find I like this (MSE) about the best so far. AVG used to slow stuff down bigtime when I used it. (well over a decade ago now though, and rumor has it that they've addressed what a hog it was. I dunno as I already disliked them and haven't bothered to even look ) It was also a nightmare for ringing the bell when it was actually just false alarms.
I didn't mind Avast (again many years ago though) until it came time to update it. It seemed like ya used to have to wait for it to actually expire before going to renew it while ya were unprotected. That was a bad enough taste in my month for them to be shown the door.
The one I was using just prior to MSE was Avira, and while it might not have been quite as caveman friendly as I woulda liked, I found it to still serve my needs just fine . Another strong point regarding Avira used to be how good it's performance was at actually detecting bad guys, while at the same time not coming up with too many false alarms. Dunno diddly about those stats anymore, but Avira used to boast the best batting average, noticeably. (independent reviews included)

Better give a mention to good old MALWAREBYTES,
Fill in the form wi any old dross to get the download.

It's a very good prog at finding malware, but I'd recommend running RKILL first as this stops running malware progs that may prevent malwarebytes running properly. Rkill is dinky n malwarebytes is small.

Also, getting the free version means you'll have to manually update it every now n then

I've been a fan of MalwareBytes for years. In many ways malware is a bigger concern than viruses, and it's getting worse all the time.
I also decided to try the entire Comodo Cleaning Essentials after you spoke of it, as when I mentioned Comodo to you I was only familiar with (and using) their Autorun Analyzer. Despite not really knowing how to use alot of it to it's full potential, I quite like the parts I am able to navigate.

I got a total break for three weeks actually. (while I was in my coma )

I recently stumbled across another little morsel of freeware that I thought I'd tell you folks about. It's called Zemana AntiMalware and basically double checks stuff. (or perhaps even replaces Malwarebytes if one so desires) I use both though


I also see little point in concealing this section anymore. JMO

TBH I think I still have both AVG and Malwarebytes on my machine... But then I've been using the tablet for web browsing mostly, and I don't do a lot of random sites - a couple forums like this one, a few podcast sites I visit/listen to, YouTube, and some news sites. I don't do porn sites, which historically I've seen (and helped clean up after) be a mess of malware, the few sites I've gotten 'hit' by stuff from (mostly detected/blocked by AV before it causes any damage) were from google searches, visiting some site linked, and keeping Noscript, Adblock, and a couple other browser extensions on help keep that safer - and a lot of times if a site refuses to load at all with noscript on, screw it, I just close it, not all that important to me to see I guess.

I've become more of a website purist with age, f**k sites that want to have a gazillion linked in JavaScript crap, auto play video crap, etc. The simpler the site, the faster it loads, the more likely I am to go back again. :p

A lot of times on the tablet I start loading a site and its so loaded with crap I just close the tab before it even finishes.

Of course, back in '99/00 I worked for a .com where we tested the site for Mac/PC, on various browsers, and spent a lot of effort to get the site to load in "25 seconds or less", *at 56k modem speeds*, because research said that more than that led to people just closing the browser and abandoning your site - and being e-commerce it was all about sales, so having potential customers bail on you from a slow site was a bad thing.  I find myself still evaluating sites on that.