What's the point of purchasing Virus Software from the shops ? Why is it even sold in shops when one can get hold of the software from magazine covers and even use the facility of online virus checkers ?

This has always slightly confused me. Any ideas ?

The expression 'You get what you paid for' comes to mind.

Firstly it is alleged that some of the disks from the front of magazine can themselves include a virus, secondly some of the new viruses (virii ?) will get into your computer without you opening any attachments (my checker has on a number of occasions brought up an alert screen when an email is merely displayed and not opened) so to use an online checker won't stop you getting a virus and spreading it.

The checkers that you pay for can be updated as often as you want, you can arrange for them to update automaticallt without you haveing to worry about checking, or they can remind you that it has been so many days since you updated your protection.

In my opinion the anti-virus software is worth every penny spent on it.

Thanks for your input, Sue.

I'm signed up with McAfee anti-virus, which seems to be a good virus checker. They recently offered a 30-day free trial of a personal firewall. It surprised me how many sites have "pinged" my computer to get into the operating system. I've had two to four hits every day since installing the firewall.