Holes found in PC virus defences

Computer security firms are in a cat and mouse game with virus writers

People using Windows computers were unprotected against new viruses for 56 days this year, research shows.

Security firm Ironport counted how long it took anti-virus firms to produce an antidote following the first appearance of a malicious program.

It found that, on average, anti-virus firms took 17 hours to respond to new threats.

Some viruses took far longer to tackle and in one case specific defences took more than three weeks to appear.

BBC News

Make's you think

Edited December 20, 200520 yr by j.paul

My dell laptop has been going well for 3 months now... Not a single issue... Latitude series D600... These are now issued to all of our field based staff... Very few problems so I gather - very reliable...

Trouble with buying PC mail order like dell if it goes tits up you cant just take it back to your local PC shop & demand a quick fix if you are in the Poo. We called dell once to say the mouse is faulty, was on the phone for half an hour doing silly tests, would of been cheeper to go and buy a new one.

... was on the phone for half an hour doing silly tests, ...

do you mean questions like:" is the mouse attached to computer?", "have you switched on the power on your PC?" , etc??

just one thing to remember:

IF your phone call is answered at US of A DON't say that you have just fed your mouse or it will take them three hours to find a fault description for mouse being fed and even then they might ask you what did you feed the mouse with --> extra three hours spent on the phone waiting while they do a search of their fault database and trying to find a fix for mouse being fed with chicken curry..

My Packard bell imedia was pre installeld with norton security suite and i had no end of problems as it dosent come with an uninstaller. Had to download norton removal tools. Upgraded to zone alarm security suite and all had been fine for nine months now. It is pricey but very worth it.

Here are my views as an it consultant (my primary trade),

Dell are excellent kit and very well prices. reliable and the tech support is good if you pay for the decent support. u get what you pay for.

all very well saying yes you can take it back to pc world. but unless is a major fual (wont boot wont turn on) they just say tough lol , and still send it back for repair.

dells next day replacment is just that. full replacement,

norton is bloody awfull, i flatly refuses to support, work or do anything with norton installed kit. macafee is the best home user all in one setup imho,

Always bought my PC's from PC world, then decided to go for a Dell as it looked good and had a good package(bit like myself), sales team were very professional. It arrived at the wrong address after three days trying to tell them that we had not signed for a neighbour knocked on our door and said 'is this yours'. After a year the main processor packed up (that is what we were told). It took about four hours to come to this conclusion, we must have talked to half of India and a quarter of Ireland, but it got fixed. Two months later the display output packed up. Decided it was cheaper and quicker to bin it. Never again. I think if you one of the major players i.e 10 PC's plus then you will get good service, but one or two then forget it.

You cant buy it in the shops!

You cant buy it in the shops!

That's lucky!

Does anyone else use a mac?