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 By the time you download the latest virus signatures, they're already out of date and you're still left unprotected against the latest threats.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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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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Microsoft has recently released a beta version of Security Essentials (previously Morro), their free anti-virus security software. I've taken a look, and I've come to a rather shocking conclusion: it's good. I mean, really really good. In fact, I think it's safe to ignore my last post about which free malware prevention software is the best. Let me just come right out and say it... Microsoft Security Essentials is the single best product, free or otherwise, to protect your computer from malware.

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When it first hit the scene, the free avast! virus scanner was a pretty new and novel idea. It was the first really good virus protection suite I had found that was not only free, but was free to update with the latest virus definitions. Not a free trial, like McAfee or Symantec, but a totally free virus protection solution that would last forever.

I've been a faithful avast! advocate ever since, but recently decided to test out some of the other free malware protection software available (Avira and AVG). Has my faith been shaken? Read on to find out!

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