XP support extended?

[Mark Hennessy]

I used Avast for a few years, and AVG before that. Both these went the way of bloat, sadly, but Avast is still better than AVG. Like Joe, I'm fine with MSE, which seems to use significantly less resources than any of the third-party options I've tried so far. That said, I've never managed to catch any sort virus. But all my non-technical friends seem to manage it - despite using virus checkers.

I can't help wondering if a certain sub-class out there might attempt a concerted attack when updates for XP/MSE cease. Perhaps it might be prudent to install something else - if only for a few months?

But if you're sensible about how you use your computer, and careful about which websites you visit, and careful about the email attachments you open, then it's pretty hard to catch a virus. Not using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express is a good start...

MSE cannot be considered serious virus protection, it fails miserably against pretty much everything else, you could have an infected system and be blissfully unaware.....

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-use...laug-2013/

Microsoft have publicly stated that MSE is the baseline standard that all third-party competitors should meet. So, you'd hope that they'd all be "better", whatever that actually means in the real world.

As my previous post indicated, keeping a machine clean has far more to do with how you use your computer, and relatively little to do with what protection software you use. I'm actually not convinced that I need any protection at all, and that's why I'm happy with MSE, which doesn't slow down the machine like the others do.

Is that a bit cavalier of me? Perhaps, but I do install other virus checkers from time to time, and perform full scans. I also scan for malware occasionally as well. I've yet to discover anything on my own machines. But that's partly because while I'm no expert, I do know a bit about how computers and websites work.

To me, protection software on my local machine is a bit like the airbag on my car: it might help one day, but I'd much rather avoid driving into something in the first place!

For the non-expert user, the best protection software - like an airbag - can only offer so much protection. If people learnt to drive properly, airbags wouldn't be needed!