Call Sign Septermber 2004 - Page 24 - Computer ChinChat - WIN A COLLINS "ROAD ATLAS BRITAIN" 2005

One of my aims in this column is provide details of good products, preferably free, that improve our PC experience. Examples of these products are Zone Lab’s Zone Alarm and McAfee’s Antivirus suite of applications. Zone Alarm is a great free firewall, but McAfee’s VirusScan is not free. Now I’ve news of a great anti virus tool that is free…
AVG Anti-Virus FREE is available free HERE to home users for the life of the product! Their statement "for the life of the product" (I’m guessing) means for as long as they continue to provide it and since they want businesses to purchase the AVG Professional version, I’d say it will be available for a long time!
What impresses me most about AVG is that you don’t notice it running. It runs in the background protecting your pc and scanning your email. The email scanning is an excellent extra that is leagues ahead of McAfee’s VirusScan. McAfee’s always appears to prolong the email downloads whilst AVG’s doesn’t, you don’t know it’s working until you see the extra text inserted at the bottom of each email informing you it’s been successfully scanned for viruses. Virus database updates are also available for the lifetime of the product, providing high-level of detection capability and keeping it constantly updated.
The download process involves

registering with an email address that they use to send a serial number to. Like many of these sites, I always use a Hotmail.com account that I keep active; it’s a lot better than using your own email address.
So now we have an armoury of excellent free tool protection. Zone Alarm Firewall located HERE, AVG’s anti-virus located HERE and Mailwasher.net’s
Anti-Spam tool located HERE

Online Estate Agents
In a recent survey, Estate Agents came top of the most hated people in Britain; not surprising considering it’s a self-regulatory industry. I’ve now had dealings with estate agents in London, Kent, Sussex, and Berkshire and I can honestly say I would never, ever, trust an estate agent. And if I was an estate agent, I certainly wouldn’t advertise the fact!
Very soon I will be putting my house on the market and I really,

really, do not want to use a high street estate agent; so I’ve been looking online to se what options are available. I’m afraid to say I wasn’t too impressed with what I found.
Many of the sites were tied to physical estate agents; I want a totally independent online site and I only managed to find one HERE. Their costs are significantly cheaper than high street estate agents; in fact it could be as low as 0.5%.
I didn’t found this company through the Internet, but through my local papers and that is what impressed me. Having an online presence is good, but to compete with the cut-throat high street agents they must advertise in the local papers.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this company and hoping their venture takes off, if so I’ll definitely be using them rather than the high street outfits. Otherwise I’ll be selling it myself!

Be lucky
Vince Chin

WIN A COLLINS "ROAD ATLAS BRITAIN" 2005
These are the ultimate road atlases for 2005. Collins mapping is clear and easy to read, detailed and fully up-to-date so that no matter where you are planning to go, Collins will get you there safely. Last year Collins celebrated its 30^th anniversary on the road and the Road Atlas was given a complete makeover. It now boasts the UK’s clearest mapping to really take the hassle out of driving so that you can just concentrate on your destination and what you are going to be doing when you get there. Road Atlas Britain is much more than just a road atlas. It features over 20 urban area maps of Britain’s major cities, a comprehensive selection of improved town and city centre maps, full London planning and detail section, a motorway services guide with information on facilities, route planning maps and limited access junction information, ‘Park & Ride’ locations shown for major cities and towns, a full index to place names and places of interest and a website guide to help you
plan your journey. Your question is probably: I’ve got an older version, surely they are all the same? Well no they’re not! With more and more cars on the road every year, Britain’s road systems can barely cope. Every year more and more roads and road systems are being constructed to handle the constant stream of traffic. Getting from A to B now requires careful preparation and planning before setting out, as well as careful navigation along the way. And if that doesn’t convince you, then just remember the last time you looked at a road atlas only to find the road you were looking for wasn’t there. Annoying or what…! Call Sign has three Collins Road Atlas Britains to give away. To win one, just tell us which one of these northern areas do Dial-a-Cab drivers service? Gateshead, Northampton or Isle of Skye? Answers to usual address or email callsignmag@aol.com Last months winners to the London Superscale map books were: Doug Fisher, Russell Simmons, Arnold Stanton and John Dixon

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