A Good Free Antivirus for You

Many friends often ask me, "I have (oops... my system) infected by a virus", "Hey, tell me good Antivirus", "I got a new PC, give me all good (they call it good, I say essentials) software you have"... so on. As I am helpful in nature, end up with spending some time to guide them step by step to fix there issue. They why should not I write about this? So here it is.

A good Antivirus
A good Antivirus is an essential part of your healthy PC. What are the basics of a good Antivirus then? In my opinion,

• It should use less resource as it need to run in the background always for residential protection, so that when any known virus tries to get into the system, it can restrict
  
• It should update its virus database frequently so that it can know which is a virus as soon as possible
  
• Can able to delete or move to chest (jail ;^) ) any virus,
  
• Can able to remove the virus from memory, even before booting completes (boot time scan)

Avast
From the above mentioned points, I consider Avast 4.8 Home Edition is good for me and most of the other people. The advantages are:

• It's free for personal use
• Uses very less resource as compared to the big guys in this field
• Automatically updates it's virus database more than once daily (Your system need to be connected to internet for this), for those don't have internet connection, can download updates for Avast.com and run in there system
  
• Scans your system completely, having residential protection and on access scanner (scans every file upon read and write)
• Having a boot time scan features which cleans all the virus who run while system startup

It has only one disadvantage is that you can't schedule scan, but I never felt it's necessity in my use.

How to start using Avast?

• Go to avast.com and download Avast 4.8 Home Edition from this page.
• Remove all other Antivirus installed in your system.
• Install Avast Antivirus. If your system is not connected to the Internet or network, then you can customize the installation by not installing Instant Messaging, Internet Mail, Network Shield, Outlook/Exchange, P2P Shield and Web Shield. Only Standard Shield is enough. So that it'll use less resource. Else go by default settings.
• While installing it, one option will come to schedule boot time scan. Say yes to it, and while rebooting your system it will scan your system, this way it cleans many worms and virus from many systems. This is an most important step.
• While boot time scan, it often shows that some virus or worm is in windows folder, and asks for confirmation to delete. Don't mind, delete it without any worries. This often happens with worms of Brontok family.
• Get your 1 yr free registration key from this url. You can renew it after 1 yr, for free.
• Open avast and enter the registration key on the starting screen.
  

Updating Avast
It updates itself very frequently (more than once a day), if the system is connected to the Internet. Otherwise go to this url and download update and run it in your system, it very easy and convenient as compared to some other Antivirus. You should do this as often as you can (I suggest download it whenever you go to Internet cafe), not less than once a month.

My experience with Avast
I came to know about it from Digit magazine. After some months they provided it in their CD. Before that I have tried some other free Antiviruses including AVG. Then I tried Avast once and never looked back. Then some friends told me that they are infected and I installed Avast in their systems and removed thousands of virus, worms, Trojans from their system. Some also started calling me as virus killer. Rahul, one of my best friends become such a big fan of Avast that he remembered the license key of Avast (The fun fact is that, he remembered my license key and forgot his). Another friend Subhendu started calling it as Agasti for fun. If I could add all the number of virus I removed from all the systems, it would be in some lac. I am using Avast since 2005 and never got infected. If any more information needed, then please post a comment here.

A Middle Click of Your Mouse

Very less people aware about the 3rd button of their mouse. They only know the left button, right button and scroll wheel. But they don't know that if they press the wheel, this will work as the third button or middle click. And using this 3rd button or middle click they can do several things in their computer life. Let's discuss about this third button/middle click use.

The most popular use of this third button is to scroll any web page or similar scrollable pages. Just click the middle button and move your mouse pointer where you want to scroll (continuous scroll, till it reaches top, end, left or right). It works for up, down, left and right (both vertical and horizontal scrolls). The distance between the point where you make the middle click and the current position of the cursor decides the speed of scrolling, if you keep it near, then the page will scroll slowly else if the distance is more, it will scroll fast.

Another most important use is Open Link in a New Tab. Middle click on any link on any webpage, it will open in a new tab. It works in all the browsers with tabbed browsing feature.

Another common use of third button is in Computer Games. Many games uses this button as a control. If you are a gamer, then must be knowing this.

Another use (but not that good) of it to close any tab in Mozilla Firefox. Just make a middle click and that tab will be closed.

Among all those uses, I use this to open a link in a new tab frequently. There are other uses of it and I may not aware of it. If you know any other use please comment here.

Listen to your PDF Document

Many people like to listen over reading. If you have any stories, ebooks or any other PDF document and want to listen instead of reading them, this post is worth reading for you. You don't need any high priced software for this. Adobe Reader, the most used application for reading PDFs (also free), can read out the PDFs loud. In the menu, go to View -> Read Out Loud -> Activate Read Out Loud (Keyboard shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + Y). Then there you can find other options under the same menu (View -> Read Out Loud) such as Read This page only (Keyboard shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + V), Read To End of Document (Keyboard shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + B), Pause Keyboard (shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + C) and Stop (Keyboard shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + E).

The voice reader is also intelligent. It reads $77 as Seventy Seven Dollar, , 11/01/08 as November first zero eight, Hero#1 as Hero Number one, etc. However it reads 10/month as ten slash month instead of 10 per month. I am having version 8.1.2, however the version 9 is available for download. So, now enjoy listening to your PDFs.

A Virtual Printer For You

Most of the computer users don't have printers. You must have faced a situation, when you urgently need to print something, but not for immediate use. As for example you booked a ticket or registered for a pan card online and need to print that ticket or acknowledgment. But you don't have a printer connected to your system to print it. Then you have to save the web page or take screen shots to print outside. But this process is not convenient as it may look different when you print.

Here is a solution, which will help you out. You need Microsoft XPS Document Writer and Microsoft XPS Viewer. Download these here: Microsoft XML Paper Specification Essentials Pack. This is already installed in Windows Vista, you need to install these if you have Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft XPS Document Writer will work as a printer and save the document in a file with .xps extension. This previews your document exactly as you can see it after printing on paper. This Microsoft XPS Viewer will help you to see your XPS file via Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher. You can copy this file to a pen drive and print using any other system connected to a printer. If your default browser is not IE, then it will not show the document, instead it will prompt to download or open a file using any application. You can download Microsoft XPS Essentials Pack and using this you can see the preview of the XPS document there it self.