Be Free...

Hmm... I have Windows XP & 7 in my home PC. (Of course Ubuntu is also there).. Of late my XP had almost experienced the near-death scenario. 

As usual initially system was becoming slow.. slower... slowest... Then it reached the next stage i.e. whenever I connected to net the system got rebooted automatically... System became totally un-responsive... 

Then decided to go for an efficient(!!) anti virus.. Almost decided a brand to buy which costed ~Rs. 1600 for a three users license. Just before the purchase landed on to "Avast" anti virus site. They say it is free for "home users"... As said in the first line itself  the problem was on my home pc.. so I am a home user... ha ha ...

Downloaded & Installed "avast" free edition.. Made the complete scan of my machine... it has 320 GB hard disk. To my surprise it completed scanning within 45 mins or so (more than 2.5 lakhs files) ... I expected much higher than this... It was the first good impression on "avast.."

The result summary showed 66 different virus / trojan horse / root-kit issues etc.,  spread across many files.. It gave usual options like virus-chest (it is nothing but quarantine), clean, delete etc., For most of the files I choose "delete" option. The action got completed very fast.. really fast... this was the second good impression on "avast"...

the final one is with my "pen drive".. My 8 GB pen-drive (with 7.6 GB filled) got scanned with in 6 ~ 7 mins.. and as mentioned above the actions were very smooth... My third good impression on "avast"...

So far, I have seen many anti-virus tools like NV, MA, KS, BD (i hope you understand) ... instead of making the system protected mostly they have made the system slower... But the case with "avast" is not like this... I don't even feel that my PC has an anti-virus ... Kudos to the algorithmic efficiency of "avast".... 

Wait.. Wait... One final point... This home protection is basic (~2.6 million definitions.. this count by itself does not look basic to me) .. It would not provide you anti-spam or fire-wall protection... 

I would still prefer to do all my online -financial transactions (phone bill, recharge etc.,) in Ubuntu - Firefox Combo.

Nevertheless, "avast" has really improved my windows - experience. It is smoother now... 

Hope it would prolong...