Do I need anti virus software?

[pcostanza]

Count me in for some type of AV though I agree with whurlston, no more Norton for me. It's huge, slow and leaves sticky residue.
I'm not a fanatic by any means and even with anti virus software, I've got a bug or two. I find it better to reformat and image back or to start over though it's a pain.

[whurlston]

Unfortunately too many people are too lazy to work with UAE and have turned it off.

UAC is for those too lazy to diligently control the use of their machine. :p

Seriously though, UAC is great for the average computer user as long as they are not arbitrarily start clicking "Allow" (which most will start doing after a couple of weeks). It was more of a means for MS to say "it's your fault... you let it in" than it was a fix for the holes in the software.

For someone like me who has been actively combating viruses/malware since before the Internet became popular, it just gets in the way.

[observer_11]

I have never used AV software on our 3 winxp PCs and we have never had a virus.

[fuzzweed]

Thanks, an interesting spread of views! I'll chuck back a couple of other thoughts I've had.
AVG has recently become pester ware IMO, although I have found a new freebie called Avast that seems to be rather neat - my only problem being (and this isn't the fault of the AV) that it is one resource too many for my struggling client machine.

My other idea was clam-win portable - designed to sit uninstalled on a usb stick, but i suppose I could put it on the HDD and schedule it launch it once a week(?) although it won't automatically pick up viruses as they arrive. Similar to the ondemand online scanning mentioned I guess.

Anyway thanks again for the input I'll have a tweak and see how it goes.

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/clamwin_portable

[whurlston]

Try F-Prot.

[markbb1]

I have never used AV software on our 3 winxp PCs and we have never had a virus.

How do you know?

Not all viruses (virii?) do things that are detectable by the user.

[systemshark]

Hi, I've got a watchguard hardware router infront of my network which includes realtime virus scanning. and I have Macfee Enterprise edition on all my machines which includes network traffic scanning and execution scaning.

As for my GBPVR machine, I've choosen not to load any anti-virus tools.