McAfee Internet Security Suite Special Edition From AOL Now PAY!!!

So my mother tells me that she's thinking of switching from Juno to All2Easy. All2Easy is about the cheapest dial-up you're ever going to find - $5/mo., but you have to find your own virus scanning program.

I'm thinking no problem - a year or so ago AOL was offering probably the best deal I've seen in a long time - all you had to do was sign up for a FREE AOL email address and they would let you download a version of McAfee for FREE.

I thought that was a deal that was too good to last.

I go to the AOL Security Page and I find the bad news. Pretty much if you're not a paid AOL customer you have to pay $40/year for the McAfee Internet Security Suite.

Actually this is NOT all that good of a deal considering that you can get presumably the same program including install media for $41.49 from Amazon and then one of their resellers claims to be selling the CD only for $12.99.

So off we go to re-examine the free virus scanning world.

Of course for many years the standard for free virus scanning was AVG Free. Well, guess what - a close look at their web site reveals that if you want a version of this software that does something USEFUL, like "real-time" scanning of web surfing, downloading, instant messaging, etc., you're going to have to cough up $54.99/yr.

F*ck THAT.

I took a look over to see what Google Pack was up to.

They're offering Norton Security Scan, but, guess what, if I'm reading this correctly - again - no free real-time scanning. To get that you have to upgrade to Norton Internet Security 2008, which will cost you a whopping $50.

F*ck THAT.

All Yahoo has to offer is Norton 360. They want $60/yr.

F*ck THAT!

It looks like the ONLY comprehensive free anti-virus package left is Avast 4.x Home Edition.

Now some quick hunting around seems to show some reviews indicating that this package may be a little heavy on system resources, but what choice do you have, gang?

If you're a RoadRunner subscriber they are still offering the CA 2007 package for free, but I have never in my life seen such a heavy-handed firewall.

Yes, my friends, it looks like the days of free Internet security may be over ...