The Microsoft antispyware does a daily (nightly...) scan of your machine
for known spyware.  I've seen nothing to indicate that it has any awareness
of other sorts of malware such as viruses, or of other machine activity such
as sending or receiving email.  The state of the antivirus art is well
beyond just doing a daily scan; I would not (do not) rely on the antispyware
program for virus defense,

David Gillett


On 2 Aug 2005 at 22:02, Steve Devincenzo wrote:

> Hi. I have a Dell running XP home with sp1.  I installed Microsoft's Antispyware beta version.  Is this the same as running an antivirus program, or do I also need to install Avast in addition to the microsoft program?  Also, if the antispyware program protects against viruses, does anyone know if my inbound and outbound e-mails are scanned as with zone alarm or avast?  Thanks....Steve.

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                          http://freepctech.com