LostInTechnology » Software

Easily Remove USB Devices with USB Safely Remove

Chinmoy.Kanjilal — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:00:03 +0000

In the built-in Windows USB safe removal tool, it is quite problematic to identify which device needs to be stopped when using several devices. Most devices have the same name: “USB mass storage device”. In addition, Windows does not allow you to hide a device, which you do not want to stop.

USB Safely Remove exemplifies a convenient and multifunctional replacement for the built-in Windows USB safe removal tool. It helps you customize your USB drive experience and lets you change many more options than the built in Windows USB removal tool.

Features

USB Safely Remove has been designed to improve the experience you have with removing your USB drive. The device selection menu shows only the devices you really need. You can easily change the name of any device – the way you want. You can even assign lovely custom icons to devices.

In Windows, you must have come across situations where your device cannot be stopped due to some files being opened. USB Safely Remove is capable of displaying a list of processes currently accessing the device, and allows you to close them.
Hotkey junkies will be pleased with the keyboard shortcut support offered by USB Safely Remove. Just press (Win + S) to view the devices. Press up/down key to select the device and press Enter to stop it. You can also view the content of the disk by pressing (Ctrl + B).

Another important difference is its possibility to see and stop any kind of hot plug devices be it USB, SATA, FireWire, PCMCIA. If USB Safely Remove does not display the device you need, try enabling the “Display all storage devices” checkbox in the program options.

Some external devices such as SATA drives from Silicon Image do not appear in Windows safe removal menu. These devices can be removed via the device manager. Not only is this method very tiresome but also time consuming. USB Safely Remove can stop such devices. It also lets you remove memory cards one by one in case two or more memory cards are connected to the card reader at the same time. It also can hide “empty” card reader drives automatically which otherwise might cause a lot of problem.

USB Safely Remove has the ability to return a stopped device. In Windows, once a device has been ejected the only way to restore it is to reconnect the device physically, which can be difficult if the device is connected to the rear panel of the system.

Conclusion

In short, USB Safely Remove is a powerful and handy manager of peripheral devices. The program gives a handy safe removal, displays what programs prevent stopping a device, hides drives of empty card reader slots, allows assigning of hot keys to stop different devices, can return stopped devices back and has many other features for comfortable work with all hot-plug devices.

(By) Chinmoy Kanjilal is a technology, web2.0 and Linux enthusiast and evangelist. He has an in depth knowledge of working of Softwares, Operating Systems, Hardwares and Computer Networks. Blogging is his favourite pasttime. He blogs primarily at Techarraz. You can find him on Twitter @chinmoykanjilal.

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Monitor Processes on Your System with WinPatrolToGo

Sourojit — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:00:20 +0000

We all know about the Task Manager utility provided by Windows, but what if you wanted to do more with it besides viewing the running applications? Here you will get a simple and complete answer.

WinPatrolToGo is a free and portable utility that can help you find all information you want about your computer whenever and wherever you want. Let’s dive right into all of the options WinPatrolToGo has to offer.

Services

Here you can view all services running in the background. You can select any service you like and click on the info button to get more information about the service. They can also be given startup permissions like disable, manual and automatic, or you can stop the running process if it is unnecessary.

Additionally, you can get more information on the processes by clicking on the expand button. If there is no information present, then you can click on PLUS info button to search the BillP Studios database for any related information and decide whether the process is safe to run or not. However, this feature is only available to members only.

Startup Programs

You can get information about all programs automatically starting on system startup. You can add or remove programs from the list . You can view detailed information of the application as told above.

Active Tasks

Information about all active processes on your system will be given here. These tasks can be stopped if you feel it is an unnecessary one.

Hidden Files

Displays a list of all hidden system files, these files can be selected and made visible. If you wish to delete any of the files, it should be done with extreme precaution and proper knowledge, as these files are constantly used by Windows to run.

ActiveX

List of all ActiveX controls registered by Internet Explorer and others are shown here. If you feel there is a security risk using some of the controls, they can be easily removed.

IE Helpers

Shows list of all applications and links installed on Internet Explorer. If by mistake you have have installed helper button which you do not require and facing trouble in browsing experience due to that, then u can remove that easily.

Scheduled Tasks

View list of all applications which have scheduled tasks on your system, this will help you to remove the scheduled task so that you get maximum system resources while you are playing games or performing important tasks.

Options

Here you can view logs made by WinPatrol and save it to your computer. These can also be saved as Spreadsheet Reports.

Conclusion

This is a very light weight and easy to use application. It constantly monitors background processes and even notifies if any application tries to add to the startup or changes the file association type. All the services provided by this utility can be found in many different programs, but WinPatrolToGo puts all of these features in a single, portable pack.

(By) Sourojit Nandi is a tech blogger from Tech-Compass with an eye for details and features of softwares and web-services. He likes exploring new concepts and software in his free time. He has years of experience in troubleshooting beginner problems in Windows and to him, blogging is an attempt to share this knowledge.

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Free Remote Desktop Sharing with CrossLoop

Prasanth Chandra — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:00:09 +0000

When I say “desktop sharing program”, it surely leaves an impression of a complex program which only highly skilled computer professionals can handle. CrossLoop is a free remote desktop sharing program that is amazingly simple, so no matter how much computer knowledge you have, this program will be easy to use.

Why Do I Need a Remote Desktop Program?

Just suppose that your kid brother (in a far away town) is trying to add a web cam, but he can’t figure out how to get it to work. You could call him and try to walk him through the install on the phone, but this usually makes things more difficult. Remote desktop programs give you the ability to work on his computer from a remote location. The ability to see his desktop and make the quick changes yourself makes the process of setting up his web cam or other software much easier.

Why CrossLoop?

There are lots of desktop sharing programs out there, but CrossLoop stands above most of them. CrossLoop is very simple and secure, and it won’t cost you anything. It’s easier to see the advantages of CrossLoop through using it, so we are going to walk you through how to use it.

How To Use CrossLoop

You will need to install CrossLoop on your computer and the computer you want to access. After install, open the program on both computers. The computer that is being worked on will go to the share tab and share the access code. The 12 digit access code is used for security purposes. You don’t want just anybody accessing your computer. You will use the access code in the Access tab in order to connect to the other computer.

Just hit connect after entering the access code, and you will be quickly connected to the other computer.

Conclusion

I won’t be wrong if I use the adjectives like free, better and efficient for Crossloop. Saying that it is the most user friendly desktop sharing application that one would come across isn’t a stretch. All and all, it is a great product and offers all the features that one expects from a fully fledged desktop sharing program.

Download Crossloop

By Prasanth Chandra from PCs Place and Review Unit , Tech Blogs about Gadgets, Software, Web apps, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials on Computer and Internet. Catch him on Twitter @pcsbox

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Snippage Turns Any Site Into a Desktop Widget

Andrew Incarnadine — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:00:32 +0000

Snippage is a desktop widget application designed on the Adobe Air platform that “snips” any portion of a website and places the clipping as an unobtrusive application on your desktop. Snippage quickly and easily enables access to your favorite information on the web, from news and weather to email and to-do lists.

Getting Started

The first step in acquiring Snippage is to download the 15.12mb Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) installer. AIR is provided free of charge by Adobe, the trusted makers of Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Shockwave Player. AIR is available for both Windows and Macintosh.

AIR

Then, you must download the tiny 112kb Snippage installer package from the developer’s site. Upon opening Snippage, you will be faced with a simple screen directing you to click the arrow in the upper right hand corner of the Snippage application.

Go ahead, click.

Using Snippage

Click the waiting arrow. Next, you are prompted to enter a URL, just as you do in a web browser. Enter the web address of your desired site.

Your favorite site on the web.

To select a specific portion of the page, simply drag the Snipmark box around using the orange directional box in its top left hand corner. Notice that the rest of the page darkens and the segment about to be snipped is highlighted. The Snipmark box can also be increased or decreased in size with the orange box in its bottom right hand corner. Once you have selected your desired portion of the web site, click the scissors icon in the top right hand corner of the Snipmark box to snip the information.

Officially snipped.

The brown title bar above the snip remains for only a few seconds before kindly disappearing into the background. The title bar will only reappear if you hover over the snip with your mouse. There are several reasons you may wish to access the snip’s title bar.

To make a new snip, simply click the + icon on the snip title bar. This is a quick and easy way to create a new snip without reopening the program.
To force all links in your snip to open in a new window, click the circle to the right of the +.
The refresh icon allows you to force the snip to refresh at a set interval of 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 3 hours. By default the snip is not set to automatically refresh.
To expand the snip to browser view and view the site from which the snip originated, click the arrow icon at the far right of the snip’s title bar. Once in browser view, the snip can also be closed by clicking the “x” icon in the far right corner of the browser view title bar.

Developer Recommendations

Snippage can be used to save any portion of a website your heart desires. The developer makes two suggestions for Snippage’s use:

1. Snip your favorite news site and keep up to date from the ease of your computer’s desktop.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

2. Access your favorite search engine from the convenience of your desktop.

Conclusion

Snippage makes it easy to take your favorite parts of the web and bring them to your desktop. What would you bring to your desktop?

Article By Andrew Incarnadine, a Christian technophile who also authors The Incarnadine.

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Record Streaming Audio with PCWin Speaker Record

Aminul Islam Sajib — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:00:40 +0000

Have you ever wanted to record something that you’re listening to online? Maybe you’re streaming some music or a podcast online, and you don’t have any way to download it. You could find a mic and put it in front of your speaker and press record, but that sound quality is going to be terrible.

PCWin Speaker Record is a better solution than the mic one I just mentioned. It’s a free program that lets you record any music, voice, sound (or noise) you hear from your speakers.

Getting Started

First, you need to download PCWin Speaker Record and an MPEG Layer 3 Audio Encoder in order to be able to record. The MPEG Layer 3 Audio Encoder is only needed if you want to record your sound in MP3 format. If you are happy with WAV format, you don’t need the extra software.

You can find the links for both of those in the last two sentences of this page.

Recording

Play your favorite music on any player you choose, online or offline. While the music is playing, run PCWin Speaker Record and choose which format you want your audio file to be recorded in. Then, simply click “Start Recording” to initialize speaker recorder, and “Stop Recording” to stop it. As soon as you stop recording, you will be prompted to save the recorded file. You can choose any folder to save your file on. It’s as easy as that to record the music you hear on your speaker.

Conclusion

This is just one of the ways you can record streaming audio, but there are many, many other options out there. What software do you use to record audio from the Internet?

(By) Aminul Islam Sajib is a 16-years-old passionate technology blogger and reporter from Bangladesh. He writes Blogging tips, technology tips, reviews, Internet tips, etc at his blog Life with Technology. He is also a technology reporter at the most renowned online newspaper of Bangladesh. You can follow him on twitter and friend him on Facebook.

Image by Sproston Green

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Three Android Apps That Will Boost Your Productivity

Chris.Smith — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:00:13 +0000

With the recent purchase of my new Motorola DROID and the recent onslaught of crazy school assignments, work projects, and personal obligations, I have begun to figure out the greatest work-flow while out and about with my phone. The best part is that these apps work with any Android handset.

Using these apps has helped me get more done, and I think that it will help you as well.

1. Locale

I swear that this app should just be included with every Android phone.

Do you always forget to mute your phone during a meeting, class, alone-time-with partner, whatever? With Locale you can set certain criteria, like an event on your calendar, GPS location, time, battery percentage, or any combination of these and give these criteria each their own specific phone settings. It sounds way more confusing than it is.

For example, say you have an event on your calendar where you can’t be disturbed by your phone ringing. With Locale, you can set that event or series of events as a criteria and then set your phone to silent during that event. As soon as that important event hits, your phone will automatically silence itself. When the criteria or event is over, your phone goes back to your predefined standard settings. Extremely useful and time saving.

2. Remember the Milk

If you haven’t heard of this application I suggest that you go to Remember the Milk, sign-up for a free account, and get started managing your life’s tasks. If you have heard of and used this application on your desktop, you know how useful it is, and with Android’s version of RTM, you get everything you would expect from the desktop version. It really is one of the better Android applications and is very complete.

You can set certain categories for tasks, set due dates, add tags, add locations where the tasks need to be done, and view by week, month, day, or whatever else. If you have an RTM pro account, you can also sync your tasks from the web app to the Android app and vice versa.

3. AK Notepad

This was one of the first Android applications that I ever downloaded. It seems like something that should be included in any modern smartphone OS. Seriously, it doesn’t seem that hard or “outside of the box” to include something that holds so much value.

Anyways, AK Notepad is an excellent application that does notepad tasks very well. You can create new notes, take notes, rename the title of the note, and share the notes via Twitter, Facebook, GMail, text message, and any other third party Android application that has some sort of sharing feature (I have Seesmic and it works with that). You can also set a reminder for a note if need be. AK Notepad is simple but nails every aspect one would need in a simple note-taking application.

Conclusion

These by no means are the only applications in the Android Market that do these tasks, aside from Locale, but they are apps that seem to do the job well. So, if 2010 is your year to “get things done” and you own an Android based smartphone, then these are 3 excellent applications to get your well on your way.

About the blogger: Chris Smith is a guy who obsesses over mobile technology and the cloud. If he isn’t posting at MobileTechMob then he is probably reading about mobile technology and the cloud, playing with his puppies, hanging out with his girlfriend, doing schoolwork, or working. He updates his Twitter here and likes to be emailed here. He is an MIS student at Penn State Behrend so he sort of knows what he is talking about.

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Temporarily Change Default Programs with Coffee

Alae Hatoum — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:00:09 +0000

There was a time in the past when there were only a few choices in software for the different tasks you completed everyday. Now, we have so much selection coming from the rise of free and open source software that it can be hard to choose which program to use for each task.

One of the problems when trying a new piece of software is that you have to change the default settings for the type of file you want to use with that software. Well, that or you have to go through a tree of menus to choose which software to use. Coffee will help you solve that problem.

No…not that coffee.

Overview

First, head to this link and download Coffee. Extract it, then open the extracted folder and run coffee.exe. It will open very quickly and go to your tray. Once Coffee is running, choose to open a file, and you’ll see a pop up menu telling you that file type is not yet recognized by Coffee. It asks you if you want to set an association for that file.

If you choose No, the file type you were trying to open will open with your system’s default application of choice. If you choose Yes, you will have the option to choose which application you want to open the file with. This application will open it with, and it will be set as the temporary default applications for the file type you opened.

Options

If you need more control and management over the extensions, you can right click on the Coffee logo in the tray icon and choose preferences.

Now, Extension Configurations will give you a more detailed look at the extensions associated with Coffee and tell you which files will open with default applications and which won’t. It gives you the option to configure a main application and another alternative one for every file extension. Using the Extension Association Configuration, you can also add extensions to each program using the browse option or by typing in the extension type.

Coffee saves all the settings in an “.ini” file in its folder which makes it an extremely portable application, especially since the program is an executable that doesn’t require installation after extraction.

Conclusion

Coffee is a great tool that allows you to quickly test new software on different types of files. It is light weight and portable, so it makes for a great addition to whatever portable apps you currently use.

Image by annia316

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Keeping Me Safe for Three Years: Comodo Firewall

Chinmoy.Kanjilal — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:00:39 +0000

This is the second post in the series of Keeping Me Safe for Three Years posts. In the last post, I talked about the award winning Avira Antivirus which according to me is the best antivirus in overall performance and usability. You can see the post on Avira here.

The second post in this series covers Comodo Firewall and how it rounds out my dynamic duo of security programs.

Overview

Comodo Firewall is an excellent security tool and has built in protection against DOS attacks, ARP poisoning and many other sensitive attacks which can make your computer potentially vulnerable in a network.

Diving Right In

To start with, the opening page offers detailed and compact usage stats. We can see network statistics and traffic details. The traffic details come in handy when checking for applications which are consuming bandwidth and identifying unauthorized access. This is useful, because it gives us a nice overview of what is happening on our network.

The firewall operates in two parts. One is the Firewall which monitors network activities and second is Defence+ which monitors local memory usage of services. Both the services come in comprehensive forms with a well defined UI and an array of options.

Closest Competitors

Just like in the last article, I want to inform you of the other options out there.

ZoneAlarm Firewall, which has a good UI and is the best alternative to Comodo, recommended for advanced users.
Outpost Firewall, which has an extremely small size and is very easy to use, recommended for basic users.
Threatfire, which is based on user feedback. ThreatFire has recently gained a huge popularity due to user participation and the good news is that Comodo Firewall has ThreatFire integrated into it.

Conclusion

This is the end of the Keeping Me Safe for Three Years series. Using a combination of Comodo Firewall and Avira Antivirus has kept my computer safe for a long time. Let us know what programs you use to keep yourself safe in the comments.

Image by Peter Kaminski

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Top 30+ Adobe Air Applications

UzEE — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:00:10 +0000

Adobe AIR has become one of the most popular desktop publishing platform for interactive applications. AIR builds on the rock solid technology innovations like Adobe Flash and Flex and blends them with new functionality to make them desktop friendly.

There are thousands of applications that are based on the Adobe AIR platform ranging from desktop clients to popular web services to productivity applications, stock tickers and even games. Here’s a list of over 30 top applications that are running on top of Adobe AIR.

1. TweetDeck

TweetDeck started of as a humble Twitter client for the desktop and quickly gained momentum as well as support for innovative features and services. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organized and up to date.

2. DestroyTwitter

DestroyTwitter happens to be my favorite Adobe AIR application of all because of its clean and simple interface that packs the entire arsenal of Twitter based features into a slim and robust architecture. This is the best desktop Twitter client as far as my opinion goes.

3. Adobe Media Player

While the name might be a bit deceiving, Adobe Media Player isn’t like a regular media player. Its more of a personal DVR for Adobe’s network. You can subscribe to channels and automatically get your favorite shows online streamed to your PC.

4. Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop is a native Adobe AIR client for the popular Seesmic Web and Seesmic Mobile services. Seesmic Desktop provides a rich Twitter experience with support for multiple users, saved searches, brand monitoring and much more.

5. Acrobat.com for My Desktop

The desktop version of Acrobat.com provides an easy way of interacting with the service by dragging and dropping files and folders from your local computer directly into your Acrobat.com account, as well as browsing, previewing, sharing or publishing files easily from your computer.

6. eBay Desktop

eBay Desktop is an application that provides an easy way to browser the world’s most popular online marketplace. It has some really interesting features such as 1 click search filters, alerts, history, and feeds that go beyond what is possible within the browser.

7. AOL Top 100 Videos

The AOL Top 100 application lets you browse through and view the top 100 music videos on the AOL Music service, right from the convenience of your desktop.

8. AIR Icon Generator

Icon Generator is a little application that lets you generate a CS3 or Web 2.0 style icons in a simple way. Just enter the text, pick a color and generate the icon.

9. EarthBrowser

EarthBrowser is an innovative earth simulation that combines an easy to navigate 3 dimensional globe with real-time weather conditions and 7 day forecasts for thousands of locations. It features live earthquakes, satellites, webcams, volcanoes and current cloud animations.

10. Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler for Desktop is a simple application to browse and search color themes from kuler.adobe.com, an online application to create and share color harmonies. You can easily import the color pallets from Kuler to your favorite Adobe design application or even copy the hex codes to the clipboard.

11. AccuWeather.com Stratus

Get the best weather on the web in a desktop widget with the AccuWeather.com Stratus. This modest looking yet feature rich widget provides current conditions and a five-day forecast for just about any location around the world, as well as severe weather alerts for upcoming extreme weather conditions.

12. Pixus

Pixus is a must have tool for designers. It lets you measure the screen objects in pixels using both mouse and keyboard with simple overlays.

13. Waver

Waver is a desktop application wrapper around the iPhone version of the Google Wave application. This lets you dock the application to a side of the screen so that you can always keep an eye on your waves.

14. Color Browser

Color Browser is a simple tool for designers to organize their favorite color palettes locally on their machines. You can import ASE files from Adobe Creative Suite applications, and Kuler etc into the application and manage all your palettes from one location.

15. Times Top 100 Desktop

Times Top 100 Desktop application does exactly what it sounds like. It shows you the top 100 of everything from Time’s annual lists, pinned on a virtual globe.

16. Desktop iPhone

The Desktop iPhone is an application which simulates the UI of the iPhone. It has the capabilities to make calls, receive calls, check voicemail, add contacts and even send voice messages using Ribbit.

17. Photo Uploader for Facebook

Photo Uploader for Facebook lets you upload photos to your Facebook account with a simple drag and drop interface. You can also view your News Feed, receive notifications, pokes and chat, right from this application.

18. NASDAQ Market Replay

NASDAQ Market Replay is a powerful replay and analysis tool of consolidated order book and trade data for NASDAQ-, NYSE- and Amex-listed securities.

19. DeskTube

DeskTube is THE desktop YouTube application. It features the ability to search/view/upload videos, post/view comments, view personal playlists, view personal subscriptions, record video, post updates to Twitter, Facebook, and even watch beautiful HD streams.

20. ImageSizer

ImageSizer is an application built to resize, rotate, optimize and rename a batch of images, outputting them as a single compressed zip file – perfect if you want to e-mail a load of images from a high resolution digital camera.

21. GeeMail

GeeMail is a powerful Gmail desktop interface which mimics pretty much the entire functionality of the popular Gmail web interface. Plus it adds a host of other powerful features like Offline access.

22. Remember The Task

Remember The Task is a light-weight Remember The Milk client that allows users to view pending tasks with due dates and add, view and complete tasks.

23. Mockups For Desktop

Mockups is a powerful design mockups application build to quickly visualize and design user interfaces for web or desktop applications.

24. Wikipedia Desktop

The Wikipedia Desktop widget lets you search Wikipedia articles from your desktop.

25. Contrast-A

Contrast-A allows users to interact with a 3-dimensional RGB color space, experiment with color combinations, check the contrast according to both WCAG 2.0 and 1.0 and see the results for different types of color deficiency. Custom color palettes can be created, printed and saved as PDF to the user’s desktop.

26. Social Media Player

Social Media Player is an open source Adobe Flex based application that lets you create mashups of your music with social services like Last.FM, Twitter and Facebook.

27. Yammer Desktop

Yammer Desktop is a native client for the Yammer web service, the Twitter for coworkers.

28. Snackr

Snackr is a ticker-like desktop widget that pulls random items from your RSS feeds and scrolls them across your screen.

29. Spaz

Spaz is a free, award-winning Twitter client for the Adobe® AIR™ platform, offering notable features such as access to direct messages and replies, CSS theming, and event sounds.

30. Q-Air

Q-Air is a QR Code generator application using which you can create your own QR Codes for mobile tagging. The QR Code contains several types of information such as a URL, a complete short message with target number, a phone number or simple text etc and can be read by any camera phone.

31. Flair

Flair is an easy to use application that lets you know whenever you’re poked, or someone writes on your wall, or adds you as a friend – without having to constantly check the Facebook website or your email.

32. Quakeshakes

Quake Shakes shows you recent worldwide earthquake activity and displays them on a map with info on location, date, time and size. Earthquakes of various magnitudes are displayed with different colored dots, giving you a dramatic visual record of the seismic activity during the past 24 hours or week.

And that completes my quick list of the top 32 applications based on the Adobe AIR platform. If there is some exciting application that I’ve missed then please do tip us via the comments below.

Article By Uzair Sajid (UzEE), a technologist and a freelance blogger who also authors The Technopath.

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Keeping Me Safe for Three Years: Avira Antivirus

Chinmoy.Kanjilal — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:00:51 +0000

Friends and family members walk in and are amazed at how smooth and virus free my computer has always been, and I can not help but smile back, proudly. It has all been made possible because of two simple and free security programs that I have been using for three years in a row now. Needless to say, I am satisfied with their performance.

The first piece of software is Avira Antivirus. The second….well, you’re going to have to check back in a few days.

Avira Antivir

Avira Antivir is an antivirus product from a German company that comes in three versions: Antivirus Personal Edition, the Premium version and the Security Suite. Do not let people talk you into believing that there is some big difference between the Personal and the Premium version. There aren’t any differences that really matter, since we will also be using a firewall (that’s a hint about what the other piece of software is).

The Personal and Premium editions use the same engine, so you will see no reduced detection rates with the Personal version. Avira has continuously topped the charts for detection rates on the AV Comparatives reports. For more information on Avira Antivir’s performance, visit this post I wrote a while back.

Closest Competitors

If you aren’t completely sold on my free antivirus recommendation, here are a few of Avira Antivir’s closest competitors.

MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials), which was rated #1 at the latest AV Comparative report, but their updates are bulky and the antivirus goes haywire when not updated. Also, there are missing options for common tasks like exceptions and incremental updates. You can check out our previous MSE Review.
Kaspersky, which is a good antivirus suite with a firewall, but it includes many annoyances like irrelevant warnings and occasional bloated memory usage. Crashing of Windows 7 installations have also been reported due to this antivirus. The latest report from AV Comparatives also reports a low detection rate when compared to earlier versions. The beta version of Kaspersky is always available for a test download for free.
GData antivirus, which is also a German antivirus and has had the highest detection rate for a long time, but I do not prefer using this antivirus, primarily because of its huge download size of 250 MB.

You Picked Avira Antivir

If you want to use Avira, you can download it and start using it right away. The Avira download page is here, and the download is sized at around 30 MB. Right after the download, you need to apply a definition update. The update which is also around 30 MB in size can be found at this page. Now, there is a little something to do after installing Avira to get it to the perfect settings.

Avira has this option of adding files to exceptions, but apparently it doesn’t work properly. So, if there is a file you are sure is harmless but Avira detects it as a virus, you have to add it to the exception list manually.

Bring up the Avira interface.
Press F8, to bring up the configuration menu.
Check the expert mode to get extra options.
Expand the scan and guard sections to a list of options.
You will see the Exception option.
Select a file and add it to exception to avoid moving it to quarantine during a scan.

Also, the free license is updated automatically. So, you can go on using the free version for as long as you want.

Conclusion

Avira is the best antivirus I have come across and I highly recommend trying it out. Come back in a few days to learn about the second part of my security setup that has protected me for three years. What antivirus do you use?

Image by Peter Kaminski

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