Free Anti Virus Software

System

I'm in the last free days of free norton (came with new laptop), a neighbour is constantly advising me to use AVG free, now you leave me wondering.

espresso

islandman wrote: »

I'm in the last free days of free norton (came with new laptop), a neighbour is constantly advising me to use AVG free, now you leave me wondering.

Why as there are more votes for AVG than against in this thread. Better than Norton without a doubt!

buglawton

AVG 8 niggles were sorted out some time ago - turn off the link checker and the outgoing email scanner to minimize problems. It includes both Virus and Spyware in 1 scan which is the smart way to go.

Millionaire

loaner wrote: »

If it only it caught everything, and updated properly.

Its crap, I have lost count the amount of times I have to sort out a infected PC running AVG. More than any other personally.

Conor_3

buglawton wrote: »

AVG 8 niggles were sorted out some time ago - .

You mean they've implemented realtime webpage, download and instant messaging scanning in the free version?

Oh, they haven't.

Conor_3

espresso wrote: »

Why as there are more votes for AVG than against in this thread.

Because people are either going on a reputation it had years ago or are morons and haven't actually bothered to see exactly what you DON'T GET in AVG8 free.

You don't get

• Realtime webpage scanning meaning a malicious site can infect your PC
• Realtime download scanning
• Instant messaging scanning

All you've got to do is look at how many threads in the last few weeks contain "My PC is infected. I run AVG..." to tell you all you need to know.

buglawton

Millionaire wrote: »

Its crap, I have lost count the amount of times I have to sort out a infected PC running AVG. More than any other personally.

Probably cos AVG is the most popular scanner in terms of number of users so you'll get more users from that direction.

No anti virus product is perfect, they all go through their phases. If your household contains 4 computers, you have to decide the most economical way of looking after them.

Also: I though that AVG does have realtime webpage scanning and realtime download scanning. The link scanner however causes a huge performance hit as it loads & inpects pages behind the currently displayed links in advance so I turned it off. Even my work anti vir (another brand) does not have that feature enabled.