Good and lightweight A/V software for X31 with XP?

[PearlJamman010]

Hi everyone! I'm not stranger to Windows PCs or Thinkpads, but I just got this machine a few days ago. So far, I've maxed out the ram and put a 60GB 5400 rpm hdd in it. It runs XP surprisingly fast but videos lag pretty badly over 360p haha. Before I had the 5400 rpm hdd I was running Lubuntu pretty smoothly but video was even choppier without a true ATI/AMD driver. I have 30GB free on this drive and might dual boot to see if the hdd makes a difference being faster etc.

Anyway, my old Thinkpad 600 is running Windows FLP with it's 233 mhz PII and 352MB ram so I didn't even think about AV software. My T410 is much quicker so I run MSE but the real time scanner is a resource hog. In the past I had used AVG but don't trust it as much anymore since when I used to do desktop support, I saw so many infected machines with AVG 'protection'. I have Avast free on my netbook with an Atom N450 1.66ghz HT, but it seems to be pretty slow sometimes, even with a 7200 rpm hdd and 2 GB DDR2.

So with my X31, I have the Pentium Mobile 1.6ghz, 2 GB ram and 5400 rpm hdd. Which one will keep XP as secure as it can be without chewing my CPU up?

That being said, other than driver issues, would Windows 7 be usable? My netbook runs it pretty snappily with similar specs.

Thanks in advanced!
*edited to fix mobile phone typos*

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
You could install FLP also on your X31...
Lowest memory usage for an AV: Webroot or Avast, middle of the road: MSE.
See also this: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/which-free- ... ory-usage/

W7?
No way, the graphics is not 'advanced' enough.
But any Linux you care to throw at it, it'll be fine.

[PearlJamman010]

Thanks for the info! I was trying to avoid FLP for this machine simply because of all the hoops you have to go through to get updates installed properly on it. The .Net framework service packs and updates never quite run right unless you edit the security policy and add yourself to "backup operators", then you have to unregister some .dll file that came with a different hotfix because it is too new for the .Net patches, then there is this "Null" file issue, and those are only the ones I can remember off the top of my head haha. I love the O/S and at one point had it installed on 3 or so machines, but I am sick of the headache.

I might try Webroot -- I have heard good things about it.

Bummer about Windows 7. I was hoping to use the X31 as kind of a backup travel laptop for work when weight and space were tight. The first time I installed it, it was painfully slow. That was back with the slower HDD and only 1 GB ram and I was hoping the upgrades would make it bearable haha.

[pianowizard]

Bummer about Windows 7. I was hoping to use the X31 as kind of a backup travel laptop for work when weight and space were tight.

Get an X60, X60s, X61, X61s, X200, or X200s. All of these are now very cheap, easily $150 shipped or less. Then sell this X31 for $40 on Craigslist.

[RealBlackStuff]

But if you want the best free AV, go for Free Bitdefender.
Don't scan more than once a week or so, it's working fine.

[PearlJamman010]

Bummer about Windows 7. I was hoping to use the X31 as kind of a backup travel laptop for work when weight and space were tight.

Get an X60, X60s, X61, X61s, X200, or X200s. All of these are now very cheap, easily $150 shipped or less. Then sell this X31 for $40 on Craigslist.

Aww haha. I actually checked the local CL and there weren't and good X series at the time. Most were older T and R series. So I went to eBay where prices are higher unfortunately. X31s were going for $50 without a battery, HDD, or AC adaptor. The one I got with 512 MB ram, HDD, and a battery that holds a 3 hour charge was $70 and was still a heck of a steal compared to the crap that was being sold for $75+. The x6x series are still going for ~$115 + S&H for one with an HDD, decent memory and a battery that "holds a charge" (aka 30 minutes till dead).

I don't actually NEED the X31 for work, but there is something about the older IBM versions that I love. So I figured if I could use it, great! If not, it's a toy to code a little Powershell on or take around the house for email, internet etc. Plus I play on re-installing Lubuntu to dual boot. Seems like a slick O/S and I need to learn *nix better. After I got this laptop, I scavenged my closet and ended up tossing 1 old latop, my old college PC (that was bittersweet ha) and an old Dell SX-260 micro tower (where I got the HDD from). Even after that cleaning up, I still have one Desktop, 3x Thinkpads, and an Acer Netbook. My wife wasn't as thrilled when she saw my stack of laptops haha.

[dr_st]

I actually went through a few phases regarding AV usage. I used to use one regularly, and found that it almost never caught anything. But it had a few annoying false positives every now and then. So I formed an impression that it's not really necessary, when you have good usage/browsing habits and are behind a router + basic firewall. Then I went without for a while, and was happy. Until the day that I caught a real nasty malware that corrupted all my executable across all shared network drives. Good God. This really humbled me and got me back on the AV track for a few years.

I was using Symantec AV Corporate, which was said to be not as bad a hog as the home versions, but in the end - still a pretty big one. When I got tired of it, I tried some free alternatives, but either they never worked right (BitDefender) or were annoying with popups (forgot which ones), or decided to hog the CPU right when I wake up and I'm on battery, without any visible way of controlling them (MSE).

So I broke down and stopped using Antivirus software again. At least nothing that stays resident / scans automatically / updates in the background.

I run the free version of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, update it and scan regularly (but when I want to). I imagine you can have a few such tools installed, and scan every once in a while. As long as there is no real-time module, there is no potential of conflicts, and no sudden, unexplained, annoying resource usage just when you least want it.

But of course, one should accept the responsibilities and risks inherent to that decision. With that said, no anti-virus provides 100% protection anyways, so one should be wary in either case.

[PearlJamman010]

Thanks for all the suggestions to everyone.

I am running barebones as of now without A/V or anti-malware. I really don't use it for anything shady -- no torrents or adult material etc. It's really just a toy, and as of now I have installed: Win 7, wiped it for Xubuntu (both really slow with the 4200 RPM hard drive and 512 MB ram), Lubuntu (first time), then put in a new HDD and put XP on one partition, tried to install Zorin OS on the other partition but the "-- forcepae" flag during install doesn't actually trick Zorin like other flavors of Ubuntu (d*mn Banias CPU). So I put Lubuntu back on my second partition. Right now, I am really happy with the performance of both OS's on this machine with the upgrades and it's pretty dang fun. If my XP VM gets hosed, I'll use Lubuntu before I can rinse and repeat, or go to one of my other laptops / PCs.

But you guys are right -- Lubuntu (and possibly other *nix) run really well out of the box with this machine. I am looking forward to learning Linux and need to find some neat apps for it. It could never be my daily machine because my current contract requires Windows 7 / IE10 for remote access to their virtual environment. Plus, I cannot get XP to install in a VirtualBox VM successfully yet in order to install Outlook and connect to my Exchange account. I also tried WINE for Outlook, but the "Mail" Control Panel fails at autodiscover and / or has a hard time with connecting to Exchange over HTTPs.

Anyone have any luck installing Windows XP in Virtual Box on *ubuntu on this machine? It sounds dumb since I could reboot into XP, but I am stubborn and would love to get this to work. If I can, then I might wipe the XP partition and just make it Lubuntu.

Anyone have any luck getting Outlook working in Wine? It installs just fine, but I cannot get my work Exchange email to see our server.

Thanks!