Tested: The Lightest Free Antivirus (To Boot or get the Boot)

I have the weakest netbook laptop available.  I need an antivirus that doesn’t take forever to start and shut down my machine.  And I don’t want my system to be all gummed up and frozen.  In addition, my friend has an old XP and asked for recommendations for protection.  MSE won’t run on his system anymore and while some still offer support for XP, they are too heavy for it.  The professional labs did some testing for performance, but their recommendations don’t even approach reality when run on my weak, weak system.  And each seems to have a different criteria for `running lightly’.  My criterion is boot speed, physical memory used, and the percent of the CPU utilized.  My tests were informal and for personal reasons, I now submit to help others.  Testing time was beginning of 2014.

Test machine:  Windows 7 starter running on an Intel atom (N450, single core) processor.   1 Gb RAM.  160 Gb HDD.  A base system restore point was created.  Wise 360 was the boot analyzer.  Process Hacker provided additional information.  Antivirus was installed, tested, uninstalled via Wise Uninstaller, and then system restored for the next program.

I like to have phishing protection and most free antivirus’ do not offer full protection.  If an antivirus solution did not have its own built in protection, I ran Mcafee Site Advisor.  AVG and Panda each have their own proprietary equivalent protection:  So with each of these I ran their software and deleted Site Advisor.  (as stated, testing was for personal, not scientific reasons ... hence unusual criteria).

Tangerine bank will steal your money – don’t trust them

This is a follow-up article on my continued mugging by the Tangerine bank.  As I had previously reported in, Rotten oranges at the Tangerine bank, I had some problems transferring my money to another institution.  Being a slow learner, and a tad masochistic, I again attempted to transfer my money.  Here’s the run down:

Firefox bites the hand that feeds it

Mozilla recently decided to enter a no win, hostile, socially politically correct battle.  Why?  Because they lack business sense.  For details, see Firefox’s Unusual Approach to Decreasing it's Browser Share.   Why does this garner a follow up article?  Because in light of them choosing to alienate a large segment of the planet, they then apparently began to bleed money and now have to beg for it.

Firefox’s Unusual Approach to Decreasing it's Browser Share

Firefox’s newer versions are pretty solid.  And with the demise of Opera presto, Firefox should have seen a jump in market share.  However, behind a decent product lies a cacophony of  numb-skulls that believe misguided political correctness is more important than business dominance. 

Rotten Oranges at the Tangerine Bank

Yep, it’s now old news … ING Canada has been bought by Scotiabank:  and they renamed it the Tangerine Bank.  I was never an ING customer, but was lured to open a Tangerine account by their “I’ll give you $50” to open an account bargain.  Plus, I like the color orange.  I received my $50 and was pleased with them.  That was my first dealings with them, and if I had written this then, this article would swoon about their awesomeness;  I’m easy that way, give me some money and I’ll like you.  However, cost me some money and the honeymoon’ll be over.  How long did it take them to cost me some money?  Surprisingly quick actually, on my second dealings with them.