My bad- I should've taken a minute and made it more clear that that was just
an amusing (to me, anyway) idea that popped into my head; I didn't really
think you were doing anything like that. My real point was that Spybot is
still catching stuff, at least for me. I think it depends quite a bit on
'where' you surf as to what kinds of different crap you pick up along the
way.
I dropped McAfee when they auto-billed me two years in a row after I told
them not to and then they got pissy with me about it. I've been using a
'free' security suite provided by my ISP for probably three years now and
it's working just as well.
Returning to regularly scheduled Vanagon programming...

Cya,
Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Old Volks Home
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 12:42 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: NVC at all (computer question)

Robert -

Perhaps I should have elaborated a bit more on Spybot S&D.  I've been
running that for about 3 years now (along with McAfee) and it always caught
stuff.  Niether caught that nasty little bug a few months back.  Then I
installed Spyware Doctor and found/caught it, chewed it it up into little
bitty bytes and spit it out.  Once I got the system cleaned, I then removed
McAfee and replaced that with AVG (paid version), both running with as
they're supposed to catching stuff here and there, left and right.

 It's just lately Spybot S&D is not catching much of anything, much less the
stuff AVG and Spyware Doctor IS catching for the past few months.  I
supposed I kept using S&D because it has served me so well in the past. Out
of habit I have run S&D first and not caught anything that a subsequent AVG
or Spyware Doctor scan subsequently catches.  Which is why I may uninstall
S&D 'cause I don't need a program taking up space on my laptop's 300Gig Hard
Drive.

I do agree that if your op system is configured, maintained and defended on
a regular basis, practically every day is trouble free for me.  I don't
spend near as much time tangling with viruses, trojans and what ever else
related now as I use to a year ago.  Ya live and learn ;-)

I was a staunch McAfee man for many years.  But I've become disappointed
with their program's quality and abilities compared with AVG and Spybot.
Thanx
--
Jim Thompson
84 GL 1.9 "Gloria"
84 Westfalia 2.1 "Ole Putt"
72 411 Station Wagon "Pug"
oldvolkshome@gmail.com
http://www.oldvolkshome.com
jim@airheadparts.com
***********************************
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 9:00 PM, Robert Fisher <refisher@mchsi.com> wrote:

> --snip--
> The AVG and the "Doctor" (I know, Dr Who pun) is usually the only ones
that
> detect any infections or
> questionable "stuff".  Spybot hasn't detected anything in the past 4
months
> and it's updated daily.  I may uninstall it if it's just gonna take up
> space
> on the laptop.
> --snip--
>
> Not that I think you're stoopid, but I immediately had this picture of you
> running the AVG and Dr. first and then thinking 'wow, Spybot never finds
> anything...'.
> My Spybot catches stuff all the time. Guess it's one of those 'YMMV'
> things,
> however in my experience a properly configured, maintained and defended XP
> installation is relatively trouble-free. I too now spend much less time
> keeping my family's computers running properly. As to the Apple argument,
> if
> most of the people I know had to get an Apple product before they had a
> computer in their lives and/or got on the Internet, it never would've
> happened. I guess it's up to the beholder as to whether that's a good or
> bad
> thing in general.
>
> Cya,
> Robert