AOL to Release 9.0 Security Edition

Say what you will about AOL - this is welcome news for the millions of AOL customers and, by extension, everyone on the net.

BetaNews | AOL to Release 9.0 Security Edition: "The message coming from America Online could not be any clearer: 'We will keep our customers safe online.' Even though the market is awash with security software, AOL has stepped in for its members and delivered a fortified version of AOL 9.0, dubbed 'Security Edition,' that secures the perimeter around its flagship client software.

Customers who download AOL 9.0 Security Edition will receive antivirus software and a firewall from McAfee, spyware detection, a pop-up blocker and a host of other amenities at no additional charge. AOL has also worked under the hood on an assortment of improvements that advance the quality of its service."

Small Business Pipeline | The Only True Fix For Windows

Small Business Pipeline | The Only True Fix For Windows, according to the author is to completely rebuild your PC from scratch. This is something I do every 9-12 months, in part because of the huge amount of software I test (installing/uninstalling software is a surefire way to mess up your Windows installation). If your PC has become totally brain-dead or so infected you can not get it clean, this is a good basic guide to rebuilding a PC from the ground up.

My only complaint about the article is that I don't think the author spends enough time talking about securing your sparkling new PC immediately by downloading and having available locally the core set of antivirus, anti-spyware, and other protection tools I recommend in The Invisible PC Toolkit (whihc you can find on The Invisible PC website).

AVG Version 7 Free Edition now available

I've been recommending AVG as the best free antivirus for some time. The new, vastly improved version 7.0 is now available for download. If you've been looking for a good AV package this is it.

"In our ongoing efforts to provide the best possible protection against computer viruses for individual consumers, we felt it was the appropriate time to overhaul and revise our hugely successful Free Edition of AVG so that consumers could realize some of the benefits and features of the considerable development and improvement that AVG has undergone” commented Peter Lipa, President of Grisoft Inc. “ We have successfully completed the beta trials of the new version of AVG Free, which has been received very positively by the many testers who participated in the program. The new AVG Free Edition is available to all users on November 10th 2004. As to ensure that there will be no loss of protection to our individual AVG Free users, both versions of AVG Free will be available for approximately the next two months so that these users will have plenty of time to download and install the updated version before their current version expires."