Computer Care 101 Part 1: Windows Updates: The first thing you should always do when trying to secure your computer is make sure you have all the Windows updates installed. These can be obtained for free from a number of ways. For the purposes of this article however, we’ll go over the quickest possible way. Open up Internet Explorer (Yes, I know. But we’ll get to this later, I promise.) and go to the Tools area of the toolbar and select Windows Update. What follows can be a fairly painless process of downloading and installing a few updates or maybe even none at all. However, if you’ve been behind a little bit in the updates, this can take quite awhile and you will learn how nice it is to be doing this on a college connection where downloads are a snap. Download all available updates and we’ll move on to the next step. Anti-Spyware: Spyware is a tricky little devil in that it can find it’s way into your computer in a bunch of ways. The biggest hole in your defense against it is Internet Explorer, as we will discuss later. Not using that is probably the best thing you can do for your computer, but what about all the stuff that got onto your computer before you started using it? For that you’re going to have to scan your computer and kick the crap out of all the stuff that was on it. Much like a virus scanner, a spyware scanner will go over all the files on your PC and look for flagged offenders. The two best programs you can run to scan your computer are SpyBot: Search and Destroy and Lavasofts Ad-aware SE. Again, both of these are completely free and will get rid of most, if not all, of the spyware on your system. I prefer Spybot because of it’s immunization features, which Ad-aware lacks, but it’s all personal preference. Ad-aware is a little easier to use and sometimes picks up things that SpyBot will miss so it’s still worth a look. Part 2: Browser of Choice: Now that we have our OS hooked up with all the latest and greatest, let’s think about what we should be using to surf the web. Your web browser is the tool by which the vast majority of the internet is transmitted to your computer. So it only makes sense that it should be at least relatively secure. Internet Explorer is a horrible browser by many accounts. If only for the fact that it is included on all computers with the Windows OS, because of that, almost every nasty thing you could get on your computer is designed to be transmitted with IE in mind. This isn’t to say that using a different browser is going to immunize you completely, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. There are a couple alternatives in the browser department that you can look at. The most popular right now is Mozillas FireFox browser, which can be obtained for free here. You can enhance it any way you like with the many themes available on their website to suit your cosmetic tastes, and you can also download extensions to add in the features you want. (The Stumble toolbar is a great time waster as we all know) Another option would also be Opera, which you can get here. Also free, Opera has a few features that FireFox doesn’t have right off the bat (though can be downloaded through extensions) but does not support extensions of its own at this time. Anti-Virus/Firewall: These are the two things that normally get people, which one do I buy? Is this one better than another? The good thing about being at college, is that they will normally be running a fantastic hardware firewall on their network, so whether or not you run one can sometimes be a moot point. Using Windows Firewall (*gasp*), which you got with your Service Pack 2 download from the Windows Update section, should probably suffice in this case because the college is running a much better hardware firewall than you can hope to get in your room. If you want to get a different third party solution, there aren’t too many good options because this is one of the big push items in the computer industry. I personally hate Zone Labs ZoneAlarm basic firewall, but you can try it out if you like ZoneAlarm. Other options include: Kerios Personal Firewall . I’ve heard good things about this one, but I’ve never used it myself. On their website they say they’re going to discontinue updates for it at the end of 2006 however. Sygate Personal Firewall: I’ve never tried this one either, but again, I hear good things. I personally just run the Windows basic firewall, because it consumes the least resources of all the firewalls and because I don’t think a firewall that can be obtained for free is going to be any better simply because these companies want you to buy their beefier version that you have to pay for. As for Anti-Virus, most of the time your school will offer you decent anti-virus software when you sign up with them. I personally received McAfee AntiVirus Enterprise Edition when I came here and I can get it for anyone that wants to receive it for free (just PM me). If you would rather not go with that solution, there are several third party offers out there. AVG: I’ve used AVG personally, and it worked great for protecting me against virus’. When it came down to removing a virus that it allowed to install however, it didn’t know what to do and couldn’t remove it. This may have changed in their newer versions, but I wasn’t too impressed with it after I found that out. It’s still free though. Avast!: Our own Karrth recommended this on the forum so I gave it a shot for awhile. This is probably your best bet for an effective anti-virus with the price tag we’re looking for (free!). It combines good heuristic protection, meaning it will prevent virus’ before you get them, and it will scan files as you access them to check for viral presence. It also uses few system resources so you can keep it running without much of a system hit, unlike Norton.

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