Preventing malware, spyware & viruses on workstation?

[hungrybeaver]

Thanks for all the input guys.
I really don't want to go the route of installing antivirus.
I'm running a dual processor quad Xeon system with 8GB RAM, so it should be more than capable of handling the overhead of an antivirus, but when I tried using one in the past, it made the system sluggish, and programs took ages to load.

AV vendors like ESET, TrendMicro have made huge strides in making sure their product does not hog resources as they did on the past. Your system wont even feel it.

I think maybe the best solution for me would be to install antivirus on my macbook, and scan anything that needs to be transferred to the workstation.
Would mac antivirus software pickup pc viruses, malware & spyware?

Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't trust it though. Plus its quite a pain having to scan everything before using it on your PC.

Now that I think about it, I would actually never use the workstation to print from, as all my web & office work would be happening from the macbook, so the only concern would be the software updates which I assume I would check maybe once a month.
Would it still be risky if I checked for updates via the software instead of through browsing?

Just buy one already!!! It costs R300/R400 for a single license. Would you put your system at risk for a saving of such a small amount?

Seriously... I have Nod32 running on a terminal server with the same CPU as you and 16GB ram with 20 users constantly using the server. The only time you notice you have an AV running is when you login and teh splash screen shows, and update notifications. You can even download a trial to see if it hogs resources.

 

[AstroTurf]

Try few and monitor them, see if they actually make any real difference.

Most new AV's use about 30meg RAM and about (for your cpu) 0.001% so you really won't notice the difference.

Edit: I would rather be losing .05% of my resources than have the machine crash at a critical moment...