Yes it’s Christmas Day but I’ve got a moment of peace and quiet and I’ve got something on my mind.
This past week I built a new PC for my mother as she wants to use a version of Photoshop that won’t run on her existing PC that has Windows 2000. I carefully cloned her hard drive to keep her data safe and then got busy with my collection of Windows DVDs. As a reviewer I have a selection of Operating Systems for testing hardware but I don’t have many copies to spare as gifts.
I swiftly upgraded her crusty old PC to Windows XP Pro and then, after a certain amount of cursing and other bad language bolted in a shiny new motherboard, processor and graphics card. The final step was an upgrade to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 as you cannot go directly from Windows 2000 to Vista and voila, she had a brand new PC with all of her data, photos, documents and emails present and correct.
Naturally there were a few glitches along the way but I handed over the PC with the free versions of
Zone Alarm firewall and
AVG antivirus installed alongside Windows Defender and all seemed to be well.
I’m no fan of installing one Operating System on top of another so I wasn’t surprised when AVG threw a wobbly with Vista reporting a missing .dll file so I simply uninstalled the software.
Apart from that the PC seems to be behaving, although my fingers are crossed as it is early days but now I’m in something of a quandary.
My mother has a firewall and a fully patched version of Internet Explorer but she doesn’t have antivirus software and I’m not sure whether she needs any. I hope I don’t sound complacent but she doesn’t use peer-to-peer software or download suspicious .exe files and to the best of my knowledge she keeps to the safer parts of the world wide web.
So this is my question: do you think antivirus software is an essential piece of protection in a cruel and hostile world or is it more like holiday insurance i.e. a handy extra that provides a modicum of reassurance?