yup. avg seems to work great. I've been using it for a few years now. I think it's the only computing I've ever got off my mum!!! She bought a laptop a few years back, and the shop suggested she use that.
And of course, firefox is also an excellent way to avoid viruses (if you're not already using it).

Yeah, I had a few issues with avg, it wouldn't pick up a couple of minor viruses that were really annoying when we used the net at my folks' house. We had a free trial of norton so I ran that and it picked both of them up. Unfortunately it costs a shitload... moral of the story is I guess AVG isn't perfect but for the performance:cost ratio it kills the others.

I reckon you should go for gmail to handle your email stuff. I handle nearly all my email through it now, and it works a treat. No need to install stuff, everything's safely stored offsite on a (presumably) safe-as-houses google server, and you don't need to go through endless backing up and reinstalling whenever you upgrade or buy a new machine.

cool. nice work. flick me an email if you need a gmail invite.

just sharing the love jimi. ;-)

young buck, circle of life, etc.

you can POP gmail or have it forward automagically. I think you can even specify filters to do the forwarding.

With the POP option you can set it so that a copy remains with gmail. And you can download all the email that's on the server by pop at any point.

i'm a bit wary of gmail's archivist tendencies. Of course, there is nothing to stop them keeping your email for ever and ever and ever, but they're so sort of open about it. Stuff you delete is still in your trash, and although allegedly the trash is supposed to biff stuff older than 30 days, mine is still all there.

I know you can pop gmail, but gmail won't pop other servers, right?

I can redirect easily enough anyway (most of my email is redirected anyway). What I need to work out is whether gmail is compatible with my preferred email client (ie, does it mark previously popped mail so it's not downloaded again, or does it need some sort of modern thing that will do mailbox synchronisation). My secret email quirk is that I still use Eudora Light 3.0.6. I just like it's beligerant plain-textedness, it's lack of irritating widgets, and best of all, it's complete drag and drop nature. It either doesn't have any registry keys at all, or is mostly reliant on its own settings, so I can just pull the folder on any storage media, drop it on another computer and it just works. None of this installation crap. It also works sweetly over networks and from others' profiles. Best of all, it has all of my email since '98, when I migrated off a floppy-disk based email system...

// ie, does it mark previously popped mail so it's not downloaded again

// My secret email quirk is that I still use Eudora Light 3.0.6

classic. Gmail help (link below) says it supports Eudora 5 light. There may be some hope of backwards compatability...?

// None of this installation crap.
// It also works sweetly over networks and from others' profiles.

Again, good benefits of using a web-based system.

// Best of all, it has all of my email since '98, when I
// migrated off a floppy-disk based email system...

One day I'll migrate the 2 gigs of email archives I've accumulated since 1997 onto a gmail account. One day...

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