Welcome
Here at PC User How To you will find links to useful software, in our Featured Links section, that will clean up, speed up and generally fix up your computer.
You will also find helpful hints for protecting your computer and securing your home network. This weeks article "Spring and the Bugs are out."
Also there are links to many useful articles on various topics relating to the internet, internet marketing and technology.
It's Spring and the bugs are out
The biggest mistake that people make is not having the right protection for their computers, especially business travelers. With all the Wi-Fi hot spots you can connect to with your laptop you must make sure that you are protected against the latest threats. You wouldn't go to a foreign country without the latest inoculations, so why should your laptop?
The first line of good defense for your computer is to have an anti-virus program. I bet you are scratching your head and saying well yes I have anti-virus, I think. Well do you feel lucky punk? There are several websites were you can go to pick up a virus to test your computers protection, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Look at your pc and by the clock in the right hand corner you should see your anti-virus program running (hover the mouse over the icons will tell you what they are and one of them should say ...resident anti-virus program). Now is it up to date, again look at the icon. If it is green then it is running and has no errors, also with most major anti-virus programs you can double click on it and it will pop up the control panel for your anti-virus and will tell you that it is happy or not. If it is not happy all good anti-virus programs will tell you why they aren't happy and how to fix them.
Updates are a key to all good anti-virus protection. You should be getting at least daily updates from your anti virus protection to make sure you are up to date against the latest and nastiest things that your computer can catch on the internet. Again if you double click on the icon near your clock you will be able to get into the controls for your anti-virus and check the frequency of updates. If it is anything greater than daily you should change it.
So where do you get anti-virus software? Well now a days you pretty much can't open a web page with out getting inundated with ads for the latest and greatest anti-virus programs. So how do you know which ones are good and which ones are junk. Well you could take our word for it that the ones listed in the featured links area are good, or you can do the research yourself and then come back here (when you do come back, we promise not to say "we told you so.")
The best place to check out reviews is any of the major magazines like PC WORLD or just do a search for reviews of anti-virus software.
Also you can find several programs that are free - now be aware that usually the free versions require you to update them manually, so it probably is better to spend a few dollars (yen, francs, pounds, euros / hey the internet is an international community so might as well include our foreign visitors in the fun) to get the full version and the peace of mind that comes with it.
Again check our featured links section for several free versions of anti-virus software.
One other note, if you think you have a virus trend micro has an online scanner for your computer to allow you to check for viruses and other infections on your computer. The program is called House Call
Next time we will discuss Firewalls, and if you don't know what one is you better tune in for that one.
