Clamwin Antivirus Reivew

By:
Pete Theisen
(Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.)

Perhaps the oldest scourge of PC users, predating SPAM, is the computer virus. The pervasiveness of these nasties is such that it is impossible to use a Windows computer for any length of time without an antivirus program. ClamWin is a free antivirus program.
Antivirus programs usually cost anywhere between $30 and $40 per year per personal computer, even more in business computers. Gone are the days when you could buy one package and use it on your desktop and your notebook, this is no longer permitted. The AV companies claimed that they weren't making enough money when they let people do that. In my case I have two PCs in my clinic, one in my home and two notebooks, which adds up to about $200 per year for antivirus - something I shouldn't even have to have in a perfectly moral world.

Money is only the half of it, you also have to install the program, and the one I had been using for many years has been getting harder and harder to set up. Not only that, their tech support has been outsourced to somewhere in the third world. This makes it a struggle to understand their accent as well as put your own thoughts across. If you get rid of your computer or change a component and try to use up your year's subscription on the new computer or part you would find yourself trying to make them admit they know what you are talking about.

This is saying nothing about the "Follow the Money" conspiracy theories about who is writing all these viruses anyway, it should be obvious that the ClamWin producers have no financial conflict of interest in there being ever more viruses. It has never been proven that any of the other AV writers were playing both sides of the street - I don't recall that even being investigated, but if there isn't any money to follow then that particular type of conspiracy theory obviously doesn't hold up.

The most difficult part of setting up ClamWin antivirus is finding it. The one most Windows users will like the best is at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/clamwin/clamwin-0.35.1-setup.exe?download. There are quite a number of other Clam antivirus products for every popular flavor of Linux and even DOS, but the Windows version is at this link. Once you are on this page, click one of the download icons and it should be delivered to your computer.

The setup program runs fairly straightforwardly and in a while you should have Clam antivirus installed. Much easier to install than the antivirus program I was paying for. I have used the ClamWin for a couple of weeks now on an old 400mhz notebook and it has worked fine. I installed the DOS version on my home desktop and found it kind of clunky, as DOS programs tend to be. Finally I replaced the DOS one with ClamWin.

It runs by itself when your computer starts, updates itself while you are on the web, tells you if it couldn't get its update, and can be otherwise managed by right-clicking a little icon in the system tray, which launches its control screen. You can scan manually or set up scheduled scans as you wish. When it finds a virus it tells you and will move the virus to a quarantine folder as well if you set it up that way. The interface is pretty on the windows version; the DOS version is just a DOS window.

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Copyright 2004.

This article is from the September 2004 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.