I often receive questions about this subject.  Today as I was writing about another topic I got the question from a reader who recognized me and asked it yet again.

Here it is…again, “What is the best free anti-virus software?”  I always have to start with the standard line which is, “If you are paying from several hundreds to a thousand plus dollars for something, don’t you think it smart to spend $39.95 on insurance?”

That usually does one or two things to the conversation; stops it and they walk off, or it evokes a thoughtful look and more conversation.

So here are my thoughts which you are welcomed to disagree or even agree with if you choose.  Drop me an email either way.

I do think that McAfee and Norton are both good at what they do; however, I also think that they have a tendency to slow a system down since they both do a great deal.  There is another one which is called NOD32 which I have never tried but many professionals say it is one of the best.  However, the previous three all have a current price of $39.95 so they aren’t free.

Now in the free category I recommend either of two, as both seem to score pretty high in the tests.  WARNING:  Run only one anti-virus software on your system or it could cause major headaches.  The two freebies are AVG and Avast! of which I use Avast! for no particular reason other than I installed it the last time I wanted to try out something new.  Next time I may switch to AVG.

Additionally, here are some suggestions that will keep your computer virus-free even if you don’t use anti-virus software.

If you are on high-speed fulltime connection, make sure you have turned your firewall on and set up your router to defend your system.  Next, if you receive any email attachments don’t open them unless you are expecting them, even from friends.  Friends’ computers may be infecting and sending out the virus to everyone in their address list unknown to them. I also advise turning off your preview pane in your email program as occasionally a virus can attack from just opening an email, although this is fairly rare.

Finally, stay away from any questionable sites.  You know the ones that promote hate, porn, how to blow things up and the ones where you get something for nothing even though you know you should pay for it (software & music). They are sometimes bad and won’t play nice with your computer either.

Christmas shopping online…if you haven’t tried it yet, will you this year?

I have skipped talking about online shopping for the past couple of years here at Double Click, but figure it’s time to do it again.  I always get a lot of email questions about it during the season.  I will reiterate from a previous column the reasons that my wife and I like it.  “There is no traffic, no crowds and high on my list of priorities, no shootings after standing in line for the latest rage gifts.”

Once again you should be on the lookout for Cyber Monday.  I am sure you know of “Black Friday” which is the day after Thanksgiving.  “Black Friday” has traditionally been the busiest shopping day for “brick and mortar” businesses during the holiday shopping season.

Several years ago the term “Cyber Monday” was coined which is the Monday following Thanksgiving.  This is considered the first and one of the busiest shopping days online, including shoppers from home and work.

According to online metrics firm comScore online retailers set a new record for Cyber Monday, 2007 with sales of $733 million, marking the highest-ever performance on a “Cyber Monday”.  This was an increase of approximately 21 percent from “Cyber Monday”, 2006.  These were very significant numbers which was particularly exciting to online retailers since the online business cuts a lot of expense for them.

The top five online stores for “Cyber Monday”, 2007:  First place goes to Amazon.com who received an estimated 10% of visits among the top 100 retail websites.  Second place goes to Wal-Mart.com which was followed by Target.com, BestBuy.com and to CircuitCity.com.

I am interested in seeing the differences this year with the currently underwhelming economic picture.  There is also the fact that #5; Circuit City, may not be in the top five with the recent news of the retailer filing for reorganization relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code

If you have not purchased anything online yet, you probably will.  So happy hunting for the online gifts you seek this year.  Get them soon because, even though it happens less often than with “brick and mortar” retail stores, they can run out of items the closer you get to Christmas.

Also, keep in mind the closer you get to Christmas the chances decrease in you getting the item in time for Christmas.  Remember that your purchases have to be mailed to you, you can’t just run down to the store and pick them up.

Today I want to bring a search engine to your attention that I mentioned about two years ago.  I don’t usually bring up a topic that I have mentioned previously; however, this one deserves it and has had some changes since I wrote about it before.

GoodSearch.com seems to be doing some good work instead of just making money for itself.  My wife teaches at Blue Ridge Christian School in Bridgewater, VA, and they just sent out a flyer about using GoodSearch and GoodShop to raise money for the school.

GoodSearch allows you to search for anything on the internet, just like a regular search engine.  They use Yahoo search as their search provider which is one of the top search engines.  GoodSearch has been proven to do good for a lot of different non-profit organizations.  As a matter-of-fact somewhere over 68,000 non-profits are now participating with over 100 being added daily.

GoodSearch will allow you to add any charity to them and that will allow your organization to earn part of the income from each search.  GS states that last year almost $8 billion was generated in ad revenue by all search engines (not just GS as they only get a small portion of it).  Each time you perform a search GoodSearch will donate 50% of its revenue to a charitable organization.  Each search pays about one-cent to the non-profit.  If you think that isn’t much look at the total earned by all engines in the previous sentence!

They say that you can help find cures, support schools, help kids, provide disaster relief, protect the environment, help animals etc.  Go to the site and educate yourself on how it works.  You can even add a non-profit of your choice.

Some of their statistics so far: ASPCA has earned $18,800, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, $9,300, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, $7,300, and the Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy over $4,200 and that is just to mention a few.

Since last year they have added another site named GoodShop (goodshop.com) which allows a portion your online purchases to be added to your non-profit.  They currently have more than 700 online stores where you can shop and up to 30% of your purchase price goes to your charity.  Most of the places I checked were closer to 5%.

Hey, go ahead and try it out!  It costs you nothing, and helps others.  When you go to either site the first time it allows you to enter the non-profit you will be helping out and from then on all searches will generate about one-cent for them.  They give an estimate that if 100 people search twice daily that will average about $730 annually for their non-profit.  The organization must be approved first so if they aren’t in the list get them signed up.

If you don’t have a non-profit in mind but would still like to try one, use my wife’s school, they and many others would really appreciate it!

I can’t believe that after eight years of using Google Desktop I have not written about it yet.  So here we go.

If you go to the main Google Desktop site (desktop.google.com) you don’t have a lot of information, much like the standard Google search page.  Basically it gives you the download link.  However, at the bottom of the page you have text links to Features (some of which I will cover here) and Gadgets.  There are a couple of other links that you probably don’t need to use but check them if you wish.

The reason that I think this is an excellent feature is that it allows you to find most any document on your computer.  Once you finish setting up your Options when you use the search bar your computer will be able to check your email, chat history, browsing history, Word and/or Excel files and a plethora of others…all at your discretion.

One aside here, windows Vista also offers this built in but (sorry Microsoft) in my opinion, the Google search is much better.

On my computer I have all of my searches set up.  I just searched for “Google Desktop” and here is what I found on my computer; 30 emails, 15 files, 28 web history, 0 chats (I don’t chat very much), and 0 other.  The first two files found were Word documents.  The first being this column that I am typing right now and the second was a column I wrote in 2003.  In the older column I just happened to mention Google Desktop while writing about another program that I don’t use any longer.  I really have not typed “Google Desktop” that often so I just searched again and included the quotes around the term.  This time I found more realistic numbers; three emails, two files and six web histories.  So when you use it don’t forget quotes on multiple terms or you could find more.  It will also keep deleted emails in memory so that you can find those in the future, if the term was mentioned in an old email.

Now I haven’t even mentioned the ability to have the Google Sidebar added to your desktop, which is full of Gadgets you can choose from.  Personally I don’t use it but that doesn’t mean that it is bad.  I just don’t like to give up the desktop real estate space.  You can also choose to “auto-hide” the bar so that it pops open when you hover your mouse over it.

I highly recommend you try out Google Desktop if you haven’t before.  It is well worth the price.  Oh, the price - free, need I say more?