Thursday, July 5, 2007

Tech Pulse 20070627: Opera Mini 4 Beta vs. iPhone, Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Tips

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Opera Mini 4 Beta launches a preemptive strike against the iPhone, but can it possibly hold a candle to the iPhone's Safari browser? Josh and Kyle also discuss anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions for Windows.

Notes and links related to this episode:

Tech News
  • Opera Mini 4 beta tries to take on the iPhone—and fails, based on Josh's testing compared with the iPhone demo videos
    • it's fairly glitchy on Josh's Treo 680, but it is still a beta
Tech Tips
Kyle's
  • Scan with Trend Micro HouseCall before installing anything
    • You can also scan with Panda ActiveScan (removes viruses, but only tells you where spyware is so you can manually remove it) and/or X-Cleaner Micro Edition (the latter is very fast and only removes spyware)
  • Kyle suggests that NOD32 is the best anti-virus available ($30, but he feels like he's donating rather than buying)
    • NOD32 is the best at detecting unknown threats with the least false positives, according to http://www.av-comparatives.org/ (as an aside, the worst overall according to the site is Microsoft OneCare)
    • AVG Free (free for personal home use) is Josh's recommendation
    • ClamWin (free and open-source)
      • Lacks on-access scanning
      • Low footprint, good for people who only need an occasional scan
  • Products to Avoid
    • McAfee products
      • except VirusScan Enterprise, which is actually pretty decent in Josh's experience, but definitely stay away from the consumer/home version as it's notorious for slowing down PCs
    • Norton anti-virus products
      • same thing for Norton as McAfee: enterprise version may be good, but avoid the home edition
  • Kyle mentioned that he reformats and reinstalls Windows ever couple months, and that slipstreaming comes in handy. You can learn more about slipstreaming at these sites:
  • Kyle also mentioned the Apple commercial "Security," in which the PC is bothered incessantly by Vista's built-in security notifications. You can watch it online here.
Josh's
  • How to avoid spyware infections on your Windows PC
    • Immunize your PC with SpywareBlaster and Spybot-Search & Destroy (both are freeware)
    • Josh explains how to set up Spybot to automatically download updates and re-immunize whenever you manually open Spybot
    • Josh recommends using a browser other than Internet Explorer (e.g. Firefox) and setting it as the default
    • Kyle suggests that on-demand scanners may not be enough for everyone, and he recommends using real-time scanners such as AVG Anti-Spyware Pro or Microsoft's free Windows Defender
    • Kyle also suggests trying Arovax AntiSpyware
  • Josh also mentions that new releases of Safari 3 Beta apparently need to be downloaded manually—don't expect the beta version to auto-update!

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