This may seem as a funny question – every computer can handle virus protection … can’t it?

Well, of course it can, but in case of an older computer this may not be entirely true. What I’m talking about is my personal experience when I was setting up a computer for my mother. She had a desktop computer that was ok except for one little problem: it didn’t start up in 50% of the cases. When she got fed up with its attitude I gave her an old box that was not being used for some time, but is was still perfectly capable of running Windows XP, Office and browsing the internet. This is all she needs and she is satisfied.

But when I wanted to install free virus protection I ran into some trouble. I installed the AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011 and took forever to install. Then I wanted to update the program, but somehow it never finished updating. Not to mention that it was impossible to do anything while the antivirus program was trying to update itself.

Then I decided to disable updates – it is still better to have a running computer with virus protection installed, even if it is not completely up-to-date. But even with updates and regular scans disabled, the computer was so slow it could not be used.

I literary had to wait minutes at a time when I double clicked Firefox or MS Word to launch. And it was no better after an hour or two – the virus protection consumed so much system resources the computer was not usable.

So, what did I do? I did something I never ever advised anyone to do – I uninstalled the antivirus and since then there is no virus protection installed on that computer …

Now, how is this ok? It isn’t.

It is very bad practice but I had to make a choice and I took the risk being aware of the possible consequences. I decided to do it anyway because I know that my mother doesn’t use the internet a lot. She only goes to a few sites that she visits regularly. But of course, she may wander of to some shady website and catch a trojan or something.

She has her birthday in May and she will get a new laptop. I hope there will be no problems until then.