Re: Virus experience

["mike shupp" mikeshupp@xxxxxxxx]

F-prot is a pretty decent virus checker. There's a totally free
version for MS-DOS out there, and an inexpensive Windows version
that you can try for free for 30 days or so. If nothing else, you
might download it, or Norton or McAfee or one or another "try and
buy" packages and do a complete scan of your system. It won't
protect you from what you might download in the future, but at
least it'll find if you've got anything to worry about already.


----Original Message Follows----
From: "J. R. Fox" 
Reply-To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Virus experience
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 07:18:50 -0800

Michael Edwards wrote:

>   If not Norton, can you recommend a couple of other good ones? I
thought

> Norton was considered one of the best, actually.

A knowledgeable source I respect tells me that Norton currently has the best
AV
scanner "engine." (The component that detects & zaps viruses, etc.) It may
have
some drawbacks, though, such as difficulty of removing the product if you
ever need
to. The other major player in the field (domestically) is McAfee /
Symantec, the
one I've been using for a few years. There is one called Sophos that is
pretty big
in Europe. I have links for several others, but am on my way out of town,
so can't
dig them out for you just now. Almost none of these are free products these
days,

though there is one from Germany that still is.

> I'm not running any anti-virus program at all, and am just paranoid about
opening
> attachments (including some which have appeared on this list, which
might, for all

> I now, be perfectly
> legitimate files relating to XyWrite). But people have warned me I
shouldn't

> continue like this.
>   It sounds, from comments on this list, that some members also see no
need
> to run anti-virus programs. So is this practice (not using ani-virus
programs)
> just being set in one's ways, or are there really good reasons in favour
of not

> using one?

Well, it depends . . . and this shouldn't be taken out of context. I
primarily run
OS/2, or its successor, ECS. Although I have seen a few viruses from time
to time,
they've all been pretty impotent in the OS/2 environment, because key things
they
look for or depend upon (Windoze components, Active-X, VBS scripting) don't
exist
there. There's a very good chance I could do without AV altogether, but
then there

would still be the possibility of passing an infection on to others.

Jordan




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