David Farrington writes:

<<Don, I found this page or web site. Maybe this is the place:
http://agn-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/vtc/>>

Yes, that's the one.  Well done, David. It's Hamburg Uni, not Heidelberg as
I had thought (well, I got the "H" right~!).

I'd recommend those reports to anyone serious about a-v protection.  I was
surprised to see that results differed markedly between dos, Win NT, 98,
and 2K.  There's some very interesting reading there.

The latest test published is Oct 2001.  They sure don't pull any punches.

They haven't tested for XP yet---now THAT should be VERY interesting.

The reports can either be read online, or can be downloaded in compressed
form and printed, which I recommend, as there is extensive reading required
to make sense of them. The comparative tables are difficult to read on a
screen.

A German product (AVK) seems to be No 1 in most areas, followed closely by
McAfee (NAI), then Kaspersky, with Norton, Innoculate, and a few others
close behind. It's a shame McAfee doesn't get its act together with respect
to a decent configuration GUI.  I doubt that any beginner could set it
correctly for home use.

The best prevention still is DON'T download files from any other than
highly reputable websites, and DON'T be tempted to open any email
attachment with a file extension you're not familiar with. My own practice
is to reject all unsolicited email attachments unless they are either .jpg
.bmp .gif or .txt, (or, occasionally, .doc, though I'm very dubious even
about that).  Anything else, I simply ask the sender to re-send it in an
acceptable format.

As a result, I've never been infected by a virus (now THAT's asking for
trouble, I fear!).

Those of you with Innoculate at a nominal price are well served, it seems.
You won't do much better.

Don Penlington








Free computer tutorials at: http://www.geocities.com/donaldpen/
Also Fractal Galleries,  free icons,  poetry,  and beautiful Queensland beaches.

               The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering
              Mandrake Linux or Red Hat Linux CD sets along
         with our NOSPIN Power Linux CD...  at a great price!!!
             http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml