Of others I’ve used long term AVG free seemed to be great till last year when I kept getting notices from them saying the service would be discontinued and I’d have to purchase the paid version. (Funny? Other people still seem to be using the free version). Well I had had the paid AVG version on one main machine earlier and didn’t think it was worth the fee when I could have the very adequate free version.

About the time AVG claimed they would cut off service I had an offer from Ashampoo to get their 3 component complete protection program for $30.00, about a third of the regular price, so I decided to give it a try. (No I am not an affiliate of theirs) It installed easily and so far I can only say it has been excellent and seems to do all the things they said it would. It’s “learning” section really seems to work well and the firewall doesn’t ever interfere unless there is some tangable threat that it can explain. The Ashampoo program is on my main machine, three of the 5 computers I mentioned earlier, I only ever put on line these days if I really have to for a short period to do what has to be done, then disconnect them again. That seems to be the best and cheapest solution by far that I’ve come across for them.

The computer I am writing this on has a new installation of XP that I put on recently and I have been waiting for the Ashampoo discount offer to come around again as I am sure it will but meanwhile this one came up with GOTD so I thought I’d try it – the earlier version actually. It wasted a lot of my time with freezes and not wanting to shut down. I couldn’t get the learning function to work at all and I also had to switch it off each time I wished to use a link, very annoying, so I ended up uninstalling it and also having to use System Restore to get back to normal.

Last night this “Delux” version was offered so, thinking that perhaps it was a fluke bad install the first time I tried it again. I wish I hadn’t bothered as this version doesn’t seem to agree with this computer either which strikes me as very strange as, – as I mentioned, this is a virgin installation of XP so there can’t be too much onboard to intefere with the way it behaves, well yes I have maybe a couple of dozen fairly lightweight pieces of software, mainly audio/video stuff as this is a computer I’ve set up to use almost exclusively for mastering music tracks from my studio.

The long and the short of it is that the Delux one behaves just as badly as the first version did so when I finish here I’m going to uninstall it.

I think GOTD is a great site and I’ve tried a few top programs from them that I would consider buying the commercial versions of in due course, but a flaw in the whole approach of giving this stuff away with no real avenues for support or consultation seems to be that if a fix exists for a problem there’s no chance of finding out about it from the makers so the only choice is to rip it out and tell everyone what a stuff-up it was.

Surely that must defeat the point of giving the program away in the first place and in the long run could cause the makers to have a woeful reputation. Pitty, it did sound good in the description.

I agree with that comment. I haven´t tried software and I they don´t give much information about whatkind version of Dr. Web they are using. Drweb.com tells that S.N.Safe&Software is their technology partner, nothing more.

But your comment #28 actually getting positive review is sad and funny. Besides your comment is untrue, a false accusation and total shit. It also tells that most people who read these comments are actually total idiots (a title newbie would be for them promotion) giving you positive review about that comment.

There is a lot useful and good comments which get from these same idiots negative reviews. Nothing new.

Where did I call anyone a name? I didn’t call #32, ICUB4UCME, a name, I said his remarks were childish, which is an understatement. #15, Treat, doesn’t understand technical information, so he insults everyone here by dismissing what they say as “pseudo tech blather”.

If you’re going to attack me, at least make an effort to get your facts straight. #32, ICUB4UCME, didn’t say that my comments were incorrect, he said that I was wrong. He claims that I haven’t thought of things. He claims that I “grasped (sic) all the free help” that I “could without paying for it”, and that I’m a hypocrite. So tell me, who’s calling names and hurling personal insults?

Everyone learns from others, but I worked very hard to acquire a good education. My high school was private, not free. My parents didn’t pay for my university education, I did, and it was hard work. I didn’t get tons of scholarships by skipping class, not doing homework, not studying, and spending my time partying and doing drugs.

If you’re going to claim that you know something about the history of PC’s, then you should at least do some research. Microsoft, Intel, and IBM have set the computer industry back by decades. MS-DOS/PC-DOS was a Microsoft product, which they didn’t write (although they did modify it). Bill Gates was a college dropout who wasn’t smart enough to write an OS, so he purchased it. As to why IBM went with the Microsoft purchased clone of CP/M rather than Digital Research CP/M, I’ve only seen one reasonable explanation, dealing with relationships, which I won’t repeat here because I haven’t verified it. Windows was a poor rip-off of Apple’s Macintosh, which, along with the Lisa, was loosely based on work done at Xerox PARC. I’m not going to get into the complexities of the relationships and how that all came about, it’s been documented over the years. Using microcomputers with less CPU and memory than some wristwatches had a couple of decades ago, nearly three decades ago competent programmers had those machines handling LAN’s, WAN’s, multiple mainframe line-printers, email, eight modems, client-server computing, true fully distributed computing not seen again until a few years ago, etc. We had both cooperative and time-sliced multitasking (not seen on Windows until Windows 95). I personally implemented time-slicing on a multi-processor system a bit larger than a PC, but with almost a couple of hundred times the compute, prior to Windows 3.0. And don’t get me started on the endless computer language, UI, and internal implementation issues in Windows. Microsoft didn’t even develop the first decent development tools for Windows, Borland did, and Microsoft used their near-limitless cash from their illegal monopoly to hire away (more like steal) Borland’s top programmers, who went on to develop the Visual Studio development tools and .NET technologies.

Yes, there are evil programmers in China and Russia, just as there are in almost every other country, including the US. That doesn’t mean all software from those countries or any other country is malware. Read my comment #49 again.

No, spammers aren’t interested in your IP address, they’re interested in your email address. I use webmail, so they wouldn’t get my IP address at all, my IP address is dynamic, I’m behind a hardware router with NAT and a hardware firewall, and I have a software firewall and security software.

I only trust reviews from sites which don’t accept advertising for the products which they’re reviewing.

As for helping people with specific issues, GOTD has a forum for that, email would be inappropriate and wouldn’t help the masses. In addition to my general comments, I’ve often tried to help people with specific problems here. What have you done to help? Oh, wait, that would be nothing.

Giovanni, pretty good list. BoClean is losing its status as an independent product and some of us stay away from Comodo after the legal beagle junque against Softpedia about their crapware toolbar stuff.

Antispyware on demand scanner: I would definitely place Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware above A2.

Now to keyloggers, where this scrambler product seems to be your fav. Do you have any biz relationship with them ?

First, u should prevent a keylogger from being installed. That is the #1 defense against keyloggers, prevention, and you recommend some of the HIPS products that will succeed.

2nd, you should detect any keylogger if it is there, although that is a less sure science than #1. If there is one there, you probably should start over with a reinstall or an early OS image, rather than hope the Trojanic element doesn’t have siblings you are missing.

Third, if one is there, and you think encrypting is the panacea, and you will only see the keystrokes in the browser, then the keylogger will simply have a screen-reading component that sees everything you see. Oops. That is a common element in keyloggers, screen-reading. So again, go back to #1.

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In other discussions above .. as for the Russian programmer brouhaha, it is true that some of their security programmers seem to be able to walk on two sides of the street, almost at the same time. And some really unseemly fights between the companies. Thus when Microsoft was busy trying to incorporate one of the small company talents (I think this was mentioned by Mark Russinovich) I really wondered if they have a vetting process that understands the tricky Russian programmer dynamic. How in a mafia-influenced environment, loyalty can be very fleeting.

There is more we could go into, but all-in-all I would tend to be cautious in using any semi-anonymous or flaky Russian or Chinese softwares, especially security-related. There is lots of fine software from various countries, I suggest always look for an active and sensible discussion forum where the developers and/or principles are involved. Like you see with a company like Online Armor and many others. Really raises the comfort level.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Your comment on Microsoft and their programming abilities is also corrupt. Without Microsoft the way we use computers today would be ten years behind. They created many of the programs we use or at least improved them. As old as you claim to be you should remember DOS. Well it was “Windows” that got us out of all those command prompts.

Russia and China both are high security risks due to the information stealing programs being created there. Is it you who isn’t up to date on what’s going on around you? I seem to be reading about it everywhere and in many forums.

You claim to be intelligent enough to never give your e-mail address to anyone unless they’ve posted many times. You claim to use aliases in order to contact people. Any tech knows it’s not your e-mail address but your IP Address they’re after. Even while using aliases, you’ve given them that information.

I’ve learned that some software groups will write bad reviews on their competitor’s product. I’ve learned that some companies will write positive reviews in order to collect revenue. So believing what you read isn’t always wise.

This program just doesn’t seem to compete with my current software (I actually ran tests) so I won’t be using it. Others may find it to be better than the one they’re currently using (Heck some people have none at all).