Need Advice/Opinion

Hello,

I hope someone can give me their opinion/advice on the following. I just reformatted my computer and finished up all the XP updates and am about to download a firewall and anti-virus software.

Based on a few threads here, I have narrowed down my choices to either the Online Armor Personal Firewall or Comodo for a firewall, and AVG or Avast for anti-virus, as I have heard many great things for both of those. However, I have read in a couple places that the latest AVG has malware built in it now, which has made me a bit leary of it. Don't know how true or false that is.

But, ideally, I need an opinion on which of each of these won't bog down my computer too much, using too many resources, and run most smoothly. I only have 256MB RAM, and Pentium 4 processor. Operating system is XP, with IE 7 for browser.

Thank you so very much for any advice/help. I'm not overly computer literate, so advice from knowledgable people is so greatly appreciated!

 

Hello and welcome to MajorGeeks,

Think AVG uses less resources and scored a little higher on detection rates (last report I could find 2/2008). I use Avast but have used AVG, no problems with either.
I use Comodo and like it, but some find it pesty and hard to configure. From what I can find Comodo uses a little less memory. Online Armor might be a better choice for you though, I have not used but is highly rated and also has excellent support from what I read.

All your choices are good products and really depends on what you're comfortable with in the end.

I would look into getting some more memory if you find things running a little slow, it's easy to install. If your interested go to crucial.com they will scan your pc and tell you what is compatible, you can order it from them or take the info to your local computer store and buy it there. I just looked and can upgrade my desktop to 2G faster memory for 90$ a few dollars cheaper than tigerdirect an upgrade to 1G would be around $45-50 I'm guessing. They also have multiple install guides here http://www.crucial.com/install/dimm.aspx

 

AVG doesn't have any malware that I'm aware of but I stopped using it when it decided that I wasn't aloud to have certain files on my pc and would falsely tag them as trojans. I switched to Avast just as the other gentleman, and I love its simplicity even though its not supposed to be as good at finding stuff, its excellent at stopping it from getting on the pc in the first place when it does. I use Zone Alarm as my firewall since I have been using it for about 6 years now I am very compfortable with it. I especially like the manual setting where only Zone Alarm itself is automatically configured to connect to the internet, everything else has to go thru me first. I despise software and games that always try and connect to the internet when first installed so I nip it in the bud. Except for Valves Steam, I have never had a problem with a game I told it can't connect. And even Steam, once I had everything updated I shut it down and I could still play offline, and then once every few months I let it back on to update again then shut it down again. It was a simple as not checking either box (always allow/always deny) so every time I started Steam (its not allowed to start with windows) I got to say yes or no depending on whether I wanted to update or play.

 

I have a friend who just finished tested Online Armor and Comodo v2. He finally decided on Comodo v2 (there are some problems with v3) because Online Armor slowed his system (XP) down. It seemed it wanted to monitor everything not just inbound and outbound like a firewall should.
As far as I know, AVG doesn't contain malware. Are you sure your aren't confusing it with AdAware which now bundles some sort of toolbar in with the install?

 

Thank you for all of the replies and suggestions.

I ended up downloading Online Armor and AVG, and so far have had no problems. It doesn't seem to have slowed down the computer at all, and I so far have no complaints.

As far as the malware which I had read a couple people mention at a few other places, I think they are referencing a window which pops up when manually activating a full system scan, which advertises the AVG 8.0 Secuirty Suite with a link to it. I only had that pop up once, and it doesn't pop up on scheduled scans or automatic updates, so it isn't a big deal to me.

Online Armor DOES seem to be monitoring a lot, however, like I said, I haven't noticed a slow down from it. I like the simplicity of it, and after looking over their support forum, there seems to be quite a good deal of quick support, which is always good. And so far, AVG hasn't had any conflicts with any installed software, falsely tagging them as trojans. It warned before installing that Roxio needed to be updated due to a conflict, but after updating, no conflicts.

All in all, things are good. Also, thank you Cat for that link. I have been wanting to update some more RAM and hopefully can get to that very soon.