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This is all a matter of opinion. Sure, McAffe and Norton Desktop products have a bad rep. But some ones that have better status are Norton Corporate (if you try to say ALL Norton products are junk, well then ignorance is bliss.), NOD32, and Zone Alarm/Kaspersky.

None of the "better" ones mentioned above are better than one another, they will do the same job at finding things. If you try to say "Norton didn't find this!!!11!!" then you may want to also note that others won't find things that Norton will.

Honestly, you aren't going to find "the" best anti virus, it's which are good, and which aren't.

As for your computer running "smoother" and "faster", of course it will, you are uninstalling a program that is ALWAYS running. Think about that.

I will be one of the very few that will go unbiased on Anti Virus, most are resource hogs, and uneffective. But I will list several products that I know are good.

I don't mean to put anyone down for their opinion, but most people just go by word of mouth and not investigating what they hear.

Some good anti virus/anti spyware products are:
Windows Live OneCare
Zone Alarm Security Suite Professional
Kaspersky
ESET NOD32
Symantec (Norton) Corporate 10.1 (2k/xp/2003) / 10.2 (Vista/2008)

This is a post I made on a forum about anti virus. This is one of the first real posts I've made in a while and thought I did a good job, so I now share it with you.

On Friday I reinstalled Ubuntu, but with a different goal in mind then last time. This time, it was to get set up, fix any problems I ran into, and see if I could get everything working correctly. As of today, I can say that 99% of it is working perfectly.

I started off only using my secondary video card because it is an nVidia chip unlike my main card, an ATi Radeon 9250 (because we all know Linux works better with nVidia). My wireless card didn't have drivers for it, so I downloaded ndiswrapper on my Windows partition and got my wireless drivers for Windows. I got the Windows drivers because TRENDnet doesn't make Linux drivers, and the purpose of ndiswrapper is to be able to use Windows drivers for Linux network devices (eg: a wireless card). Once I setup my internet with my now functional wireless card, I downloaded EnvyNG and downloaded the newest drivers for my nVidia GeForce MX 4 graphics card. Upon rebooting my computer after the installation of my new video drivers, I noticed Compiz was running. This is a bad thing, seeing as I was going to enable it anyway.

The next thing I did was get my audio working correctly (yes, audio barely works correctly, if at all out-of-the-box). I started off by reading a tutorial on the Ubuntu Forums on how to change your output from eSound to ALSA. This forum thread explained what to do, and gave a script to use so you can have multiple applications use audio at the same time (which you'd think should be standard, right?). After doing so, everything seemed to be working good as can be. Now, pulseaudio does crash every now and again (*cough* during Skype phone calls *cough*), but it's running good besides that. The last thing I did was replace my default audio mixer with KMix (seeing as it doesn't have spasms like Gnome Volume Controller does).

Then the fun part came, application installing! The only thing I had to compile from source was my alarm clock applet, which came as a surprise. One of the first things installed of course was Opera, which isn't as stable as it is on Windows, but still runs good. Then I ran Pidgin (no need to install, it comes with Ubuntu) and set it up (I was a Pidgin user on Windows as well, so it was an easy transition). Then, came time to get and setup an IRC client. This isn't as easy as it sounds seeing as how I am a huge mIRC fan (enough of a fan to write his own modified version). I decided to go with XChat because mIRC isn't very stable when run under WINE, and everything else is either too much or too little. Another easy transition for me was from Winamp to amaroK. Now I did use a lot of the little known features of Winamp, but they weren't that hard to let go seeing as I used amaroK when I was using Winamp a year or so ago on my Gateway). Then came VLC Media Player, uTorrent (yes, I still refuse to use anything else, Linux or not), Photoshop CS2, and Skype.

I still hit the occasional hiccup in pulseaudio, and Opera crashes more, but it's bearable. I've changed my nVidia GeForce MX 4 card with a GeForce 6220, which runs so much smoother. And as of now I'm using Ubuntu as my primary install, I don't know how long it will last, but as of now, It's primary. As for anyone looking to jump into Linux, don't expect it to be a walk in the park, you'll realize that a lot of mainstream software, and your "favorite" software isn't ported to Linux. And be ready to learn how to use the terminal, it's not a nightmare, but it's out of the usual for a typical user.

Well, that plan failed after trying to get my second monitor working, however failed to do so after finding out X.org can't properly configure hardware. I say this because ALL of my hardware configured in xorg.conf was "Configured Video Device", "Configured Keyboard", and "Configured Monitor" instead of having what drivers it used, or settings. But no, just "configured now don't try to touch anything". And the fact that I can't listen to music and talk on Skype at the same time. And the fact that things don't "just work".

You might say "well some things you have to configure yourself", and I completely agree. However, I shouldn't have to do that for EVERYTHING. I'm done with my rant on this, maybe in another 3 years things will ACTUALLY "just work", or at least somewhat work.

So I downloaded Paint.NET and have been giving it a run for its money. I've got to say it's really nice. It doesn't have as many features as the almighty Photoshop, but it does have enough to get by. Unless you're a huge Photoshop junkie (a real junkie, no OMG YOURSPACE fags), you wouldn't even notice.

As far as I've gone with it, it feels easier to use and work in. And as for features, it is a major upgrade from MSPaint/The GIMP. I don't want to try to sell anyone the product, but seeing as it's free, go give it a try if you want.

http://www.getpaint.net/

Today I’ve changed my email provider from Microsoft’s Hotmail (now Live Mail), to Google’s Gmail. Over the past month of trying to fully switch to Office Outlook, I’ve noticed (and been bothered) by the limitations on services offered by a free (yes, there is a paid version) of Hotmail.

While I do find Hotmail to be a good service if you are a Microsoft fan boy, it’s a constant headache if you separate yourself from them. One huge problem I had with setting up my Hotmail account on Outlook was that I needed to get a plugin for Office to get my account to work. Now, why is it that I have to get a plugin for a Microsoft product to work with a Microsoft product? Aside from setting it up, when I send emails (Yahoo! Mail, and many others do the same) they stitch ads for random crap that nobody wants as a footer to my emails. Not only did I find this a nuisance, but highly unprofessional (I do sometimes use email for serious stuff). Now, these things can be ignored to an extent, but recently I’ve noticed that I can’t synchronize my calendar with Hotmail (gayer service, or gayest service?), and the fact that they have recently added a pretend attempt to service Hotmail in “full mode” to Opera users.

You may wonder why I’d even need to login to Hotmail via web if I already have Outlook configured. The answer to that is Hotmail limits all features when using Outlook on a free account to email, and contacts. Back to topic, if you are an Opera user, you may notice that when you load your Hotmail (if you use it) that it attempts to load “full mode” first, then gives the option for “classic mode”. Now I had no problem with being stuck with Classic Mode in the first place, but when you wave the new version in my face to make me think I have it, then it not work, screw you.

Once I noticed this, I immediately started looking for an alternative. My path started off on logging in to my old Gmail account, and checking what they’ve done with it in the past year (last time I used it, it was still in “private” beta). As I saw they added a lot to the service, I threw Gmail into Outlook and gave it a spin. I noticed that I had to get a plugin to get calendars to synchronize, but Google didn’t make Office, so I don’t blame them.

As of now, I’ve given my global email to all contacts stating that I’ve switched my email provider to Google and gave my new address.