Hello Fay and GP-UK,

On Wednesday, January 31, 2007, at 12:12:41 AM, Fay wrote:

> My laptop has behaved very well since I installed Mozilla Firefox, but:

> the Norton anti virus programme which came with it was running out so I
> installed AVG Free. Since then or soon after something has happened to
> slow down the loading of programmes and especially I have difficulty
> connecting to my email because the connection times out. There is a
> small delay with the Internet browser but not very much and it doesn't
> fail to connect.

> I have defragged he disc etc but no joy. Any ideas from those who know
> about these things?

In addition to other good advice already posted, if you are willing to
pay for your AV application I would recommend you consider NOD32.

Begin Quote (from vendor newsletter circa October 2006):

"ESET NOD32 Antivirus achieved the highest throughput of all vendors
on the standardised [Virus Bulletin] test at 8.36 MB/sec for
executable files. This was nearly six times faster than McAfee's
NetShield antivirus which scanned at 1.4 MB/sec. Similarly, NOD32 is
four times faster than Kaspersky antivirus (2 MB/sec)."

End Quote

It also has a small memory footprint.

For the ESET NOD32 home site see
http://www.eset.com/products/workstations.php

Those of you in the UK can download a 30 day trial from the UK site
http://www.eset.co.uk/

Also check out some independent review sites. Amongst the prominent
are:

1. Virus Bulletin.

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/index

You will have to register but it's free with the exception of the full
Virus Bulletin reports which you have to pay for. However checking
back through the tests history you can see which products passed,
failed or weren't submitted for any of the, I think, quarterly tests.

2. ICSA Labs.

http://www.icsalabs.com/icsa/icsahome.php

ICSA Labs is the security industry's central anti-virus product
testing and certification facility. Here, you will always find which
products are currently certified.

Once a product is certified, ICSA Labs will test the product to assure
continued compliance with the testing criteria. These Certification
Maintenance Tests are carried out at the discretion of ICSA Labs, but
not less than quarterly. These tests are conducted using the
developer's latest updates without the prior knowledge of the
developer. This helps to ensure that every release of the product is
capable of meeting the certification criteria, not just a special
'certification' version.

Chris

Declaration.

No connection with ESET apart from using their product for a number of
years (both on 266MHz PII 384MB W95 and 1.7GHz Centrino 1GB XP Pro
machines).

--
 Chris Salter mailto:[log in to unmask]
 Lincolnshire Post-Polio Network http://www.lincolnshirepostpolio.org.uk/
 Polio and Post-Polio News http://mt.lincolnshirepostpolio.org.uk/pandppnews/