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Ou And Oli On The Wisdom Of Using Antivirus Software
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-09-25
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
George Ou has an interesting stand on antivirus software: he thinks the stuff is worthless. This morning, Ou made something of a supporting argument with a blog entry titled "Proof that Antivirus software makes your PC crawl."
He first restated one reason as to why you should "toss out your (desktop) antivirus software." "Running antivirus on a personal computer is like having the bomb squad inspect a suspicious package inside the house right next to you," Ou wrote. "The effectiveness of antivirus software is also questionable since it won't work at all for zero-day exploits that haven't been updated yet."
To support his statement about "crawling PCs," Ou turned to an article from a 22-year-old UK resident named Oli. Oli took a detailed look at "What Slows Windows Down?" and "the results of the security software were quite shocking."
"I've always known that being most involved with the system, antivirus and firewall programs are going to make things slower, but I was just completely astounded by the Norton result when compared against the other software on show," Oli wrote. According to his research, Norton Internet Security 2006 caused the longest Boot Delays, Prime Delays, and FileIO Delays.
Other types of security software trailed the Norton product, but also caused above-average delays. "Antivirus programs tether the performance of your computer alongside that of one three years its elder;" Oli concluded. "If you really need an antivirus system, make sure you follow these benchmarks but also make sure you check how good the one you're looking at really is."
A brief return to Ou's post seems appropriate. Ou does not use any antivirus software. "Now how do I know I don't have any viruses?" he asked. "I . . . manually conduct occasional scans of the hard drive for viruses and spyware and I never find any."
Tag: Antivirus software
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews. InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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