virus software

[punio75]

Have around 10 old laptops at school .

They currently have no anti-virus stuff on (as far as I'm aware) and are running xp.

Should I get something for them? Kids use them for basic internet use.
Is there anything free?

Thanks!

[speedlolita]

Shoving MSE on them should be better than nothing, and free.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/security-essentials-download

[VR46]

AVG do a free one.

[charlesr]

Another vote for AVG Free if you don't want to pay. Although you might be best to disable the startup scan.

[punio75]

Can AVG free be put on a number of machines though?

[charlesr]

Good point. It may specify "not for business". There's nothing to stop you doing it apart from ethics though I think.

[smouty]

For basic internet use have you considered getting rid of XP.
If they can run a Chrome OS variant they will be faster and more secure.

[punio75]

Basically going to run these for another 6 months before we invest in new!

[Jei]

Pretty sure you can no longer install MSE on XP machines anymore. They stopped it once support for XP ended.

No doubt there will be a dodgy way of doing it though.

[paulus]

Avast free is a little bit better than avg.

[MartyG]

Yeah, AVG bloated up considerably, so I stopped using it - Avast might be a better choice on the older machines.

[punio75]

Cheers everyone- will try some avast first.

[randombs]

I'd also recommend looking into Windows SteadyState.

You set the machines up how you like(or just install it on them as they are) and every reboot it'll restore them to the that same state.

Nothing actually gets saved onto the hard drive(SteadyState creates a virtual hard drive image) so viruses usually can't muck anything up. Then you probably won't even need antivirus - just a reboot like in the Amiga days!

You can also use it to set restrictions(e.g. disabling Control Panel, automatic restart after X minutes) and if you can choose which user accounts are allowed to make changes(e.g. install new programs and drivers).

At my old job I configured the guest-use PCs across all our hotels with this, removed anti-virus and had zero problems.