So let’s say you just bought a second hand laptop off your cousin, and it’s running like a dog with three legs… Slow and clumsy. You can’t tell if it’s just that the laptop is a little old and has seen better days or, the more likely option, that it may well be infected with hundreds of viruses that your cousin wasn’t aware of.
So the first step to killing viruses is finding them. Below, we’ll list some great virus scanning software. Give them a try, see what you turn up, and if your virus scanning doesn’t make any difference whatsoever when it comes to laptop performance, well…
We’re sorry to say, but maybe your cousin sold you a lemon!
Viruses used to be little more than practical jokes. They would display a silly image or a piece of text on your screen, and that would be that. They’d eat up your memory and hard drive space (which was pretty precious in those days), and could be easily gotten rid of, often by manual deletion.
Today, viruses are a little different. The modern virus is always created with one purpose in mind: Get money.
Viruses are designed to steal from you. If they can’t get your bank account information and your credit card number, they’ll settle for your personal info such as a phone number, an email, or an ip address, so that they can sell this off to spammers and other con men and ne’er do wells.
So of course, antivirus protection is a top priority these days. That’s why it’s become such a hot market. Everybody needs it, so everybody’s selling it. On the one hand, this makes for a buyer’s market, so there are plenty of free virus killers, since the banner ad revenue alone can support a good virus killer.
Of course, this also means there are a lot of virus killers out there that are just out to make a quick buck. They barely work at all, they’re just made by a company eager to jump into a hot market.
If you want perfect virus protection, we have a few recommendations: Avast! Home Edition, Avira, and McAfee. Avast and Avira are free, they get updates every day, and they work. McAfee is a paid program, but it’s worth the price, being a full security package, killing spam, spyware, viruses, and everything else.
Whatever you do, don’t leave yourself vulnerable. Download something and do a virus scan as soon as possible, and keep your computer safe and clean.
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