Smart People, I Call You

[Machiavelli]

The video card is key! All the specs look great, but if you slap a dicey video card in there it's just never going to do the things it should (and the quantity of RAM on a card is not a reliable indicator of how fast it is!).

[Kangleton]

I'm pretty much seeing "yes" across the board here, so I think that all speeks for itself. Thank ye' gents.

[Jaeram]

If you can come back and tell use what the video card is, just for an added amount of security.

[Things Muffin]

*puts on her dunce hat and sits in the corner*

[Kangleton]

Alright, smart people, come back for a sec.

What do you all think of antivirus stuff? I'm talking free antivirus stuff. Any recommendations? Any awesome must-have free protection?

I want the best! And all of it!

No viruses, no spyware, no anything... not for me! Oh no.

Well smarties? Tell me your secrets.

[Kangleton]

Alright, smart people, come back for a sec.

What do you all think of antivirus stuff? I'm talking free antivirus stuff. Any recommendations? Any awesome must-have free protection?

I want the best! And all of it!

No viruses, no spyware, no anything.

[Kangleton]

Alright, smart people, come back for a sec.

What do you all think of antivirus stuff? I'm talking free antivirus stuff. Any recommendations? Any awesome must-have free protection?

I want the best! And all of it!

No viruses, no spyware, no anything.

[Jaeram]

Hmm.... you want the best, and you want it for free? I doubt that's possible... at least... legally.

[Kangleton]

I mean the best of the free.

[MKartMaster]

What Mighty_Draco uses: Nothing. Srsly.

What I use:

• Antivirus: Avast! free edition. You have to use a bit of 1337 to set up a scheduled scan, but it can be done. Alternatively, AVG free edition would work, if they've fixed their bug with it picking up NWN2.exe as a malicious file.
• Antispyware: AVG antispyware. Simple, updates from time to time, nice interface.
• Firewall: Comodo Firewall with Defense+. This thing might drive you nuts for the first 3-7 days, as well as whenever you try to install anything, or use a program for the first time, but I don't mind it. I figure it's okay to have an overprotective firewall because it's not made Microsoft.

Also, what vid card did you get? We want to know!

[Mighty_Draco]

I actually wrote up a post explaining my lack of Antivirus, but the forums messed up and it was lost...

To sum it up, I've nothing of value to protect. Antivirus slows down a computer. I avoid downloading attachments from spammers and executing them. Worst case scenario, I take a magnet to the drive and start anew

[Jaeram]

I've got Yahoo! SBC DSL, and with our service we are given access to Norton, and the AT&T Yahoo! Online Protection, made by Computer Associates. These two tend to get the job done for me, coupled with Mozilla Firefox browser. It gives good virus coverage, spam blockers, pop up blockers, fire walls. My router also gives a firewall.

If you have a bit of extra cash I know a few months back my brother got his own internet connection (comcast cable internet), and had to pick up a new virus protection program and he picked the Caspersky one, I think it ran about $40 and you get updates for like two years I think. *shrug*

At one time I did not use virus protection soft ware because, like Draco, I didn't have anything to protect and besides that I knew how to fight the viruses without using soft ware. I would just do things like edit the registry key, use windows restore points, and if all else failed I would reformat my hard drive, and I've yet to meet a virus I couldn't handle with that. Although now that I have things I like keeping around without tons of back ups (which I do anyways) I use my protections.

Truthfully though, if your smart about viruses and have the ability to detect things on your computer like key loggers you could probably get away with just the protection that windows gives through windows updates, and the pop up blocker and other utilities that come with Mozilla Firefox.

I remember one really fun an exhilarating keylogger I actively fought back when I played WoW. Some guy hacked my WoW account (because I had a level 70 hunter which was great for grinding cash/soloing) and 3 of my email accounts. When I would change my passwords and have new ones sent to my email over and over again he kept getting them a few minutes later, and I couldn't figure it out, and then finally I said 'keylogger! oh you son of a bitch'. So after I played with him for a few more hours, I had the passwords to my email changed randomly (they send you a new random password) and sent them to an email account I had never accessed and he couldn't have known about. After that I did the same with my WoW account, and then I called up Blizzard and had them freeze my account so no one could log in until I called them back. Reformatted my computer, keylogger was gone, reset my passwords (to different new ones) and had my account unfrozen. Turns out he had grinded about 200g worth of items during that whole fight, so I threw them up on the auction house and reaped the rewards. Needless to say it's an extensive process...

Edit : That post got long... fast..

[dieOrg]

Alright, smart people, come back for a sec.

What do you all think of antivirus stuff? I'm talking free antivirus stuff. Any recommendations? Any awesome must-have free protection?

I want the best! And all of it!

No viruses, no spyware, no anything.

Have a look at

ZoneAlarm - FireWall www.zonealarm.com
AVG - Antivirus (as stated already) http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1
Adaware2007 (for adware) http://www.lavasoftusa.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

Hopefully this will give you a good starting point.

[Lollercide]

I highly suggest using Avast as an antivirus. AVG is good as well, but they have made careless mistakes (deleting non-lethal files that were essential to run games) in the past which leads me to believe that Avast is more reliable.

ZoneAlarm is a top-notch firewall that is free if you care to put up with dancing around their conditions, else, I'd say Sunbelt is second best.

When looking at Spyware keep in mind that Spyware detectors/protection work in layers cooperatively (UNLIKE antivirus software) So I'd suggest picking up all of the following.

Spybot S&D, has an optional TeaTimer program that's awesome.
SpywareBlaster (by Javacool)
SPywareGuard (by Javacool)
Windows Defender (Microsoft, if that's your OS)

[Tupoun]

Avast! (Home) - one of the best free antiviruses (it reached moretimes 100% in virusbulletin then for example AVG),
Spybot S&D + TeaTimer - really good.

About your computer:
CPU - I personaly think, that more then dual-cores are useless, if you're not using some programs for video encoding-decoding, packing-unpacking big files, 3DMAx or something like this, where you could use their full potential. Dual core with higher frequency's today better then Quad-Core and I don't think that this will change in the future (make programs for multi-core CPUs takes more time, it's more difficult etc.),
MEMORY - 2GB for todays games, on XP I think is not needed more then 2 GB (today). About 3 GB - it means 3x1GB? If so, better bu another one 1GB modul to be able use the dual channel for memory. 4GB the same case like with Quad-Core - are you using something for encodin-decoding big video files? Or packing-unpacking then? Yes .. you should have 4 GB. But - two additional 1GB you can add any time, so I would buy just 2 GB. (max. XP memory usage is about 3.5 GB RAM, max running file under XP 2GB - 32 bit.)
GPU - I've bought NVidia 8800GT yesterday (better then 9600 for the almost same price) with 512MB and it's not a bad card (7900GT before - overlocked). I changed the details in Crysis from Middle to high, can I use shadows now in Crysis .