Your favorite helpful nerds are starting a series of youtube videos with simple tips and tricks to keep your computer running at its best. Check out the first in the series, where we show you how to stay protected while browsing the web using totally free software!

The problem with your typical signature-based anti-virus software is that it relies on virus signature definitions to do its detection. It works sort of like a vaccine. You get vaccinated against the latest threats, which should protect you should you happen to run into them, and your "vaccinations" come in the form of downloadable updates to your virus signature database. Unfortunately, hundreds of new viruses are released every single day--that's just way too much for the "vaccination makers" to keep up with. By the time you download the latest virus signatures, they're already out of date and you're still left unprotected against the latest threats. That's where sandboxing comes in.

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The FCC has given Internet users an open forum to express their views on proposed Net Neutrality policies. This is great, as it provides more transparency in the policy-making process and allows at least some form of discussion to take place between the FCC and the people it will be affecting.

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Microsoft released their free anti-malware product yesterday, and it's still awesome. If you're on a Windows computer, you should stop reading this post now and head here to download it. In case you missed my original post on MSE, let me just recap by saying it's the single best signature-based anti-virus software available. It's low on resources, simple to setup and use, and high on performance. Did I mention it's also free?

Also, in case you're wondering, all of the default settings in Security Essentials look great to me--except for one. I would recommend that you turn ON "Scan Removable Drives" under Settings->Advanced. This will make sure that your USB thumb drives get scanned as well when MSE does a full scan. Happy downloading!

A secure system begins with the installation of all the latest patches for Windows (and whatever other software you might have running). Without them, you're a sitting duck for whatever malicious website or hacker you might happen upon. This is why it's so important to keep your computer updated at all times. Too often do I see clients infected with a virus because they simply didn't have their Windows updates installed--they were too lazy to install them, they didn't want to restart their computer, or they just didn't realize they had to. If you're like them, you could be one website away from a malware infection.

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