You may be thinking to yourself right this moment, why would anyone want to run a computer without a virus scanner?! Well the ugly truth of the matter is that virus scanners take up enormous resources. A recent blog post on codinghorror.com (read here) outlined how bad it really is, you may be suprised by these results Jeff Attwood came up with.
| Percent slower |
| |
Boot
|
CPU
|
Disk
|
| Norton Internet Security 2006 |
46% |
20% |
2369% |
| McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8 |
7% |
20% |
2246% |
| Norton Internet Security 2007 |
45% |
8% |
1515% |
| Trend Micro PC-cillin AV 2006 |
2% |
0% |
1288% |
| ZoneAlarm ISS |
16% |
0% |
992% |
| Norton Antivirus 2002 |
11% |
8% |
658% |
| Windows Live OneCare |
11% |
8% |
512% |
| Webroot Spy Sweeper |
6% |
8% |
369% |
| Nod32 v2.5 |
7% |
8% |
177% |
| avast! 4.7 Home |
4% |
8% |
115% |
| Windows Defender |
5% |
8% |
54% |
| Panda Antivirus 2007 |
20% |
4% |
15% |
| AVG 7.1 Free |
15% |
0% |
19% |
Mind you that all of these virus scanners use the same virus detecting definitions. So even if you absolutely must have a virus scanner, then you may want to choose one of the more effecient ones. On the other hand you can simply not have a virus scanner running and enjoy all that extra performance by following these simple rules.
-
Install a firewall to prevent unauthorized access to your computer
-
Create a VM to install that shareware software you like to download, or bittorrent on.
-
Use an account with non administrative rights on your windows box to do day to day things. Only when you need the admin account log off your current user and use the admin account. You will be amazed at how much this helps.
-
Do not put anyone elses USB drive into your computer, have them email you the files so that the emai service you use can virus scan them for you.
-
Run housecall a couple times a year, this is a free online virus scanner offered by trend micro, no install required.
-
The most important thing you can do is install Vista 64. This version of the operating system had many of the security holes closed that McAfee and Norton sued to have reopened in Vista 32 bit edition. Amazing that anti virus companies want to keep open security holes for viruses to infect you, guess they have to make a buck too.
If you follow these rules you should be ok. I have been running for the past 5 years without a virus scanner and haven't gotten a single bug yet. My only issue has been adware, but since installing Vista 64 it hasn't been an issue. Note that if you install vista 64 you will want to turn off windows defender as that takes almost as much processing power as a virus scanner to run.
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