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Avira's AntiVir has been a player in the security world for some time; however, in 2008 its status boomed because of its remarkably strong detection rates. It still remains near the top of independent antivirus efficacy tests, but while the 2009 version more or less kept pace with the competition, the 2010 edition isn't quite as good as it could be.

Both longtime and new users alike will note the pop-up ad that appears whenever a program update is downloading; it has been the unaddressed focus of critical and user dislike for several years. While the occasional ad … Read more

First up, thanks for the amazing response to Friday's Cheapskate post. Many of you shared some terrific deals!

Second, I'm still grinning ear-to-ear over MSU's at-the-buzzer win over Maryland yesterday. That has nothing to do with today's deal; I simply can't contain my jubilation.

OK, back to business. I'll never again buy a printer that doesn't have Wi-Fi. I mean, cables? Really? This is the 21st century, people. I'd sooner go back to using dot-matrix printers.

Very often you have to pay a premium for a Wi-Fi-equipped printer, but not today: OfficeMax … Read more

The world's largest botnet, Zeus, has had its traffic disrupted by repeated disconnections of a Kazakhstani ISP, but a series of reconnections has revived its banking Trojan activity, according to security researchers.

The botnet mainly pushes out the Zeus banking Trojan, an information-stealing keylogger that relays sensitive data back to its controllers. The Kazakhstani Internet service provider AS Troyak provides network connectivity to six other ISPs that host Zeus botnet command-and-control servers. On Wednesday, the upstream connectivity to AS Troyak was cut by unidentified agents.

This disconnection resulted in the shutdown of 25 percent of the Zeus botnet, said … Read more

Even if your PC is equipped with up-to-date anti-malware software, hardware and software firewalls, and other security measures, it can still become infected. The weak link in computer security is the wetware: the human beings who use the machine. And there's simply no fool-proof defense against operator error.

That's why any PC security plan has to assume that eventually, some piece of malware will breach the defenses. And these days, infections can do considerable damage without being detected. Here are five ways — some more practical than others — to reduce the risk of someone stealing the sensitive data on … Read more

Spam is so pervasive that many think the lunch meat was named after the e-mail and not the other way around. Spam's annoying, but viruses are deadly to your PC, and when they come in tandem, it's double trouble. The right tools can help you stay one step ahead of the problem. PCPrivacy's Spam Sweeper can stop spam and kill viruses before they have a chance to enter your system through your e-mail client. Spam Sweeper doesn't download the entire message, just enough to tell what it is, a simple scheme that's quicker than ordinary … Read more

CanoScan Toolbox is a one-stop shop for all of your printing needs. Though it mostly works without a hitch, the lack of a workable Help feature could leave many users in the dark about some of its functions.

The user interface is about as basic and straightforward as it gets, with prominent buttons for functions like Copy, Print, Mail, and more positioned side-by-side in a small window. Each button is labeled, so there's no question about its purpose. Clicking a button opens a dialog box that walks you through each step. For example, drop-down boxes in the Copy dialog … Read more

It was horrible to imagine. A Belgian man, uncommunicative since a car accident left him paralyzed in 1983, suddenly seemed to have a message to convey last November with the help of a speech therapist. He was not unconscious, he indicated. He was trapped.

Now, neurologist Steven Laureys, one of Rom Houben's doctors who diagnosed the patient as conscious based on bedside tests performed four years ago, is telling reporters the speech therapist got it wrong. While recent brain scans of Houben do show brain activity and even consciousness, Houben is not communicating, Laureys says.

"We did not … Read more

E-mail scanning and a tiered level of rootkit removal come to Ad-Aware in Monday's update to version 8.2. Ad-Aware Free, Ad-Aware Plus, and Ad-Aware Pro now come with e-mail scanning for Microsoft Outlook users, as well as expand the Ad-Aware Live system to block malicious files from downloading, and introduce a tiered rootkit removal system that increases in efficacy as you upgrade Ad-Aware.

The new features are part of the recent expansive approach that Lavasoft has been pushing in Ad-Aware, looking beyond antispyware as the company tries to keep the program relevant. The tiered rootkit removal is the … Read more

CheckUp is an easy-to-use multipurpose maintenance utility that can help you monitor and improve your Mac's performance. Its very visual interface uses colorful and dynamic icons, graphs, and dials to display performance and data over eight different categories: Profile (including uptime and a bandwidth tally), System (especially great for seeing which OS your Mac can handle), Processors (twin dials for dual processors, plus a temperature monitor), Memory (configuration, usage, and testing), Disks (all partitions, with an option for repairing permissions), Network (showing input and output in a customizable graph), Processes (a prettier, more flexible version of OS X's … Read more