<p>According to the STC site..sophos antivirus is required</p>
<p>Right now it's not, but I know last year it was. I don't know if it will be required again or not when Fall quarter starts. I have it anyway though.</p>
<p>Yes. It's required that you install Sophos Anti-Virus (and verify that it can detect viruses) before you can transfer to/from the UCLA residential network, but it's not required that you keep it installed once your connection is up and running.</p>
<p>Is there any reason that I would not want keep Sophos on my computer? I've never actually heard of the program, but some of the Anti-Virus programs I've used have been worse then some of the viruses they protect against.</p>
<p>Not really - its not a bad program, but it sure as hell isn't the best out there.</p>
<p>
Yes. It's required that you install Sophos Anti-Virus (and verify that it can detect viruses) before you can transfer to/from the UCLA residential network, but it's not required that you keep it installed once your connection is up and running.
wait, so they only check for it when you are setting up your connection? and after everything is set up and working, you can remove it and use whatever AV you want instead?</p>
<p>Yeah, the program was required last year to be installed before your computer was allowed to access the internet, but after you got the connection, theres nothing that could stop you from using whatever AV you wanted. They only implemented this policy because in the past, people were going online and dling etc w/o any AV and then complained afterwards about infections- so this is la's attempt to get everyone to use an AV product.</p>
<p>Yeah, the STC only checks for Sophos when you're connecting for the first time, just to be on the safe side, even if you already have another anti-virus program... you wouldn't want to allow any Trojans on your computer, let alone your campus!</p>
<p>note - never try to install two anti-virus programs on your computer at one time. They will conflict and cause issues.</p>
<p>
[quote]
even if you already have another anti-virus program... you wouldn't want to allow any Trojans on your computer, let alone your campus!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>LOL flopsy</p>
<p>"note - never try to install two anti-virus programs on your computer at one time. They will conflict and cause issues."</p>
<p>i already have norton antivirus on my comp, so do i have to uninstall that and install the ucla antivirus program to use the internet there. seems kinda silly....</p>
<p>lala03-- It is very silly, but that is what I had to do last year (when they first implemented this silly policy). Being a conspiracy theorists, I thought that UCLA had an arrangement with Sophos. =P</p>
<p>would you recommend i just use sophos, or some other free one like AVG or avast! ? my panda platinum subscription (which i got for free) is expiring in a couple days.</p>
<p>You have Panda? Awesome! ;)</p>
<p>But if this expires, I suppose you should just use Sophos then. Oddly enough, the computers in the school library use McAfee. Then again, one of comps is McAfee while the other is Norton, so I guess mixing (on separate machines) isn't THAT odd.</p>
<p>AVG works really well for me. one thing about norton that i hate is that they dont REMOVE the damn virus when found in a scan. im not sure about mcafee.</p>
<p>i thought norton was too...integrated for my liking. like every menu and every window had something related to norton. my computer ran faster after i uninstalled it.</p>
<p>Norton Anti-Virus/SystemWorks is awful for those who never get viruses... It includes so many utilities that have run in the background to function that it's like having spyware/malware on your computer. I'd recommend keeping Sophos over Norton Anti-Virus.</p>
<p>yepp. what icarus said is very true. don't run two antiviruses at the same time. if you really need two at the same time, you should disable one of the scanners.</p>
<p>Well, for Norton AV, Sophos will actually force you to uninstall Norton before you can start its installation (and if you try to reinstall norton after you install sophos, norton will force you to uninstall sophos). I used to have norton, but it expired sometime during the school year, and my computer runs noticably faster with sophos as oppose to norton so I'm not turning back (or paying the extra $).</p>
<p>^ yeah - the reasoning for that is that each AV program tends to have an active scanner that does a 'quick-scan' of every single file your hard drive accesses. If you have two AV programs active on your computer, they both try to scan the same files at the same time, which will lead to problems.</p>