There is still the possibility that your computer gets attacked from an external source using crafted packets through your hardware firewall/router (even though the probability is slim with NAT configured). You still should have anti-virus installed on the PC. Not having an anti-virus application that is up-to-date installed on a Windows PC is asking for trouble. You can do without a software Firewall application if the PC is strictly dedicated to trading and is never used for browsing, games, email, etc. Software Firewall applications on your PC must inspect every incoming & outgoing packet using processor cycles, which will definitely slow down the response of your PC for trading. - Greg
Hi Guys have been running my trading machine for years without any anti-virus running in real time. Have a hardware firewall with NAT and SIF plus have the WinXP firewall running. I do have very strict rules on accessing the internet, email etc. Added to this is a thorough backup / restore regime. In my case it is necessary in order to cope with the load that my charting is presenting. Latency is not too much of a problem since I am already on a slow link (other side of the planet, sometimes connecting through satellite when I can get up to 10 seconds latency). What I want to state here is that it can safely be done. However it is more work than having a real time anti-virus running. Maria
Definitely NOT !!! Can you imagine, it made Windows XP unbootable !!! I have been using it since march 07 and from the first impression even written a very positive comment on this forum. Now the story. I have configured avg so that the scanning and update are running in the night. One morning I have found the computer hanging and on the screen the avg update window. At the beginning I thought may be its web connection problem and restarted the computer. It doesnt boot ! With multiple attempts I could finally boot in a secure mode and uninstall avg. After that XP works again. Tried to do something with customer support. Its terrible. Each e-mail ist answered by another person. And each time the discussion starts from the beginnning. Because I can not use the sw any more, I have asked to pay back the licence fee. No, its my problem that I can not use. This shows that avg is as dangerous as any malware only the difference that malware is free and for avg its necessary to pay. Now I am with trial version of Kaspersky. So far so good, but this time I am more cautious with too optimistic comments. So be WARNED with AVG.
I had a similar hang issue with AVG - managed to get back by using restore function. No more antivirus after that. I use hardware router, WinXP firewall, and a couple of alerter type prgrams like Winpatrol. I expect to have to swap out my harddrive to the freestanding back up every now and then but so far this only became necessary when an online antivirus scanner (Bitfdefender) asked if I wanted to 'disinfect' an infected system file - It actually DELETED it - since when did disinfect and delete [a system file] mean the same thing?
Now I see also more reports about critical issues with AVG but its too late. Unfortunately I was too lasy to research before buying. Without antivirus I feel a bit too dangerous or its necessary to be very disciplined on the web and with installing different sw.