Tech Tips for the Week of October 19th - Free Anti-virus

Expanded Distribution

This week I've expanded the list of folks who receive this email to include the ELT group, as I received some requests from this group to be included in this mail-out. As well, I have had some requests to include some EA's in my mailing list, so I have added them as individuals. If you have folks within your schools or offices who are interested in receiving these weekly emails, please let me know, and I will add them to my list.



On the other hand, if you do not want this emails littering your inbox, you can check out the tech tip from week 2, which demonstrates how to filter out unwanted emails. ;-)

Tech Tip Archive

If you wish to refer to a previous Tech Tip, I have created a blog archive of all this year's Tech Tips. You can find it at http://calstechtips.blogspot.com.

Workshop Rescheduling

As a result of other priorities, the Elearning team has had to re-schedule the Inspiration/Blogging workshop originally scheduled for October 19. The new date will be Monday, December 7 at Chinook Education Centre, Room 1B. If you would like to attend this workshop, please email Cal.

This Week's Tech Tips - Free Antivirus Software

As I mentioned in last week's Tech Tips, October is Cyber Security Awareness Month. As a fitting reminder, I noticed this week that AVG Antivirus has just released version 9 of its AVG Free software.

On more than one occasion I have had people come to me with virus issues because they let their subscription to a commercial Anti-virus product, such as Norton or McAfee, lapse. Many people are not aware that there are a number of perfectly adequate and capable anti-virus products available free for personal use.

In this week's Tech Tips, I would like to highlight two such products, AVG Free and Avast Home Edition. Both are free for personal/home use. I have used both of them on home computers and could recommend either.

• AVG Free Antivirus - AVG is a very capable Anti-virus product. In past versions, options for automated, scheduled scans of your computer were very limited; however, the current product, version 9, has more than enough flexibility in its options to accommodate the home user. AVG's Free's license allows the user to install the product on one home/personal computer.
  
• Avast Home Edition - Avast Home Edition is simple and effective. One downside is that it doesn't perform regular, scheduled scans of your home computer; the user must initiate scans, but it is very good at catching viruses on the fly. While Avast is free for personal use, it does require a registration process, which is not very complex.
  

One Small Warning: Free programs sometimes attempt to generate revenue by offering to install third-party products, such as web browser toolbars. As a general rule, I would caution against installing these products. AVG also has its own browser toolbar, which I don't really recommend installing.

Note, too, that these are Windows-only solutions. If you need suggestions for other operating systems (Linux, Mac), please contact me.

Until next week ...