Chris Nixon Mini Blog

After reading this post questioning whether antivirus software was a virus in itself, I was prompted to let you know my experience. A few weeks ago, a guy at work came into the office and asked me to help him speed up his computer. This first thing I did was try and remove Norton Antivirus. I've always found this to be a horrible resource hog, and there are better solutions available for free. No matter what I tried, the PC wouldn't let me uninstall any part of the software until other parts of the software were removed first. Classic malware behavior.

Eventually I gave up and looked for a solution on their website. It turns out their Norton Antivirus Removal Tool is the most downloaded software on their site. I'll let you make your own judgements about that. After about half an hour I managed to get every last trace of the software off his PC, and got a huge increase in performance. Forward three weeks...I get a phone call from my colleage saying he is now getting bullying pop-ups from Norton on his PC telling him to update his Norton Antivirus.

What a disgrace! The only solution left in my armoury was a fresh install of XP. In my opinion viruses are a scare tactic used by big software companies to peddle their wares. Do me a favour and follow this advice.

1. Don't install big-name antivirus software. Stick to something like AVG.
2. Don't visit dodgy web sites....you know the ones.
3. Don't open dodgy email attachments.

If the worst comes to the worst and you still get a virus after all that, you can be safe in the knowledge that it won't be as bad as having antivirus software killing your PC. Alternatively...buy a Mac.

I've spent the last six months worrying about getting a proper off-site backup solution for my photographs. It's all very well backing up to an external hard-drive, but what I the house goes on fire or an electrical surge blew the lot? Until now I have relied upon Flickr and SmugMug until now, but they weren't able to act as back-up for my precious RAW files.

Yesterday SmugMug announced SmugVault, a new service that would allow users to back-up those RAW files too. I was extremely happy, and hurriedly signed up for the service. Unfortunately, I was quickly disappointed. I had thought it would "stack-up" the RAW files with the displayed jpeg files. This wasn't the case. It was just a manual service where you could upload the RAW files alongside the jpegs, or keep them in a different folder.

It became apparent that the service was not for me.

Within minutes, however, it was suggested by Phill Price that I took a look at Mozy. An unlimited set-it-and-forget-it service that would back up all my important files, and for two computers would only cost me a fiver a month. I never have to worry about remembering to back-up. It takes care of all the thinking.

I'm still in the process of my initial back-up, but so far it has been extremely smooth and easy. The software is simple to use on both the Mac and the PC. It begins by suggesting the files that need uploaded to which I added a few (a lot!) more, and I hit go.

It really has been as simple as that.

Check back for a follow-up post next week as I update you on the completion of the back-up and the incremental updates.