AOL is giving away anti-virus software.
I don’t like paying for anti-virus software. Heck, I don’t really like paying for software, even though I once made a living off a piece of software.
I’ve been using a free anti-virus program called Anti-Vir on our ancient family PC for years. It seems to do the job, but I hesitate to recommend it to friends because it doesn’t automatically update itself (like the not-free have been doing for years) and many people who use computers can’t be bothered to update.
AOL has just started offering Active Virus Shield, an anti-virus program that is probably good enough and features automatic update. It’s a free download. I just freely downloaded it and installed it on the family PC (after uninstalling Anti-Vir). You must provide an email address on the download page. AOL sends an activation code to that address. Towards the end of the install, you’re prompted for the code. After you’re done with all that nonesense and you’ve completed the install, you have to reboot your computer. It’s somewhat annoying, but I think McAfee and Symantec manage to be just as annoying.
I’m running the full-scan now and I just noticed a little click box, clicked on by default, that reads “Pause virus scan when CPU is busy with other applications.” Good.
The full scan is chugging along. It’ll take a long time on this old PC. Oh, another interesting checkbox, clicked off by default, “Do shut down this computer when finished.” That can be useful.
