New to Vista

[TopBunk]

Vista Ultimate laptop (Dell XPS 1330) arriving in next few days. Two questions:

1) Antivirus software - I have an unused NAV2007 licence which should handle vista ok, but would like the opportunity to rid myself of Norton:hmm:.

Does anyone have any feedback for me on the free AVG with Vista?

2) As per the above - what about Open Office? I tend mainly to use word, excel, outlook and access.

Setting the machine up obviously offers opportunities. What would you all do knowing what you know?

[Parapunter]

Have AVG free on Vista HP - no problems at all. Not sure about your 2nd question but if it helps, I have office 2003 running faultlessly on Vista too.

[Gonzo]

Open Office runs fine, although I've recently switched to using IBM/Lotus Symphony, another free office suite.

[airborne_artist]

No email functionality in Open Office, of course. Thunderbird, from the Firefox family, is good enough.

[Gonzo]

I used to use Outlook for calendar and email.

I moved to GMail early in the year and love it. Google Calendar is now my main calendar app.

If you do need to have an email client, then I second Thunderbird.

[empacher48]

I also run an XPS M1330 with Vista, great laptop by the way - best purchase I've made! :ok:

But I run AVG free on my work machine, that runs Vista, no problems at all.

I have open office on my XPS, and there have been no problems with that either!

Vista itself hasn't been a major problem on the XPS, just the UAC which can get annoying when you are tweaking the system itself.

Enjoy!:ok:

[TopBunk]

Thanks to all, machine should be delivered tomorrow!

It looks like it'll be AVG, OpenOffice plus Outlook for me!

[willby]

Hi
I presently use Avast free with Vista and surprised to see no mention of it here.
Is AVG regarded as a better product? Avast has trapped many virus attachments in spam email for me but would be interested to hear views re the merits of AVG v Avast.
Regards
Willby

[5711N0205W]

Avast there me hearties, have recently changed to Avast from AVG, running it on both XP and Vista with no probs, allegedly less resource hungry.

[exeng]

I'm using AVAST with no problems so far. As for Vista - well it's been discussed at length here but I'm considering sending my main desktop back to XP.

Regards
Exeng

[P.Pilcher]

Although I tend to use AVG on all my machines, I had a problem a couple of years ago in that AVG made the copy of XP pro on my main machine crash! Remove AVG and the problem went away, so I swopped over to Avast. With this I have had absolutely no problems at all except that it never notifies you that its licence has expired and requires (free) renewal. In Avast this is an annual event, and the first thing you know about it is when XP tells you that your virus software is out of date. This takes a month or two after Avast refuses to update due to the lack of a current licence.
I have never managed to track down the reason for my AVG problem. It does not occurr with any of my other computers which run on XP home or pro. Subsequent software modifications may have by now eliminated the problem anyway. The only possibility is that, at the time, only my main computer was running the software to interface with my networked Netgear remote hard drive backup unit. That software is now running happily on my laptop running on XP home, protected by AVG - which doesn't need its licence renewing annually.

P.P.

[frostbite]

Funny you should mention that. I had a similar quite serious problem with AVG, probably more than two years ago, and have never tried it again.

Happy with Avast for some time.

[P.Pilcher]

Yes - I did try to notify AVG about it at the time in view of the possible implications, however as I was using the free version, they didn't want to know as you might expect. I am sure that they, or Netgear, did something about it though.

P.P.

[willby]

Hi,
Glad to read all the positives re Avast as I have used it on XP up to a few months ago when I purchased new pc with Vista installed. When my months free trial of Mcafee expired I installed Avast and so far no problems.
P. Pilcher: Interested to read your comment about not being notified that the annual licence was about to expire as I received a pop up message a couple of days ago that I had to renew my licence and that it would last for a year. I had only installed it a couple of months ago.
Willby

[P.Pilcher]

My Avast licence is due for renewal again next month. Bearing in mind your comment I will watch what happens with interest - unless my popup blocker stops it.

P.P.

[Earl]

Installed AVG and Office 2003 on 2 computers so far for friends with Vista no problems with AVG or office.
Bought a new laptop recently in BKK, insisted on XP though.
Thai salesman laughed a lot and understood why.