anti-virus free or paid?

Little_John

Yeah you can buy it on its own I have never bought hardware at the same time. mbam is a great on demand scanner and it removes even the toughest or spyware. I would recoemnd useing it I used to use Adaware but mbam kicks its !!!

chunter

Surely this is all perceptual.
I use AVG Free (and AVG alone) because it's Free. I use Firefox with Noscript.
I delete emails I don't like the look of (or look at the source code of the email)
I don't use Bebo or Limewire or Messengers.
I don't go chasing through astalavista.
I do backups of my docs every week. I backup emails once a month.
I haven't had a virus in years because (I hope) I have reasonable competence.
It's not how good your security software is, it's how competent you (and your family) are combined with your security software.

A little education would speed up an awful lot of computers...

Marty_J

True, but if you're going to bother using an anti-virus application, why use AVG when there are better alternatives?

ss4

i'm considering buying kaspersky internet security 2009 3 user, what are the advantages of using this one from amazon for £19 over the oem version from scan for £14?

gjchester

ss4 wrote: »

i'm considering buying kaspersky internet security 2009 3 user, what are the advantages of using this one from amazon for £19 over the oem version from scan for £14?

Technically it's an easy question, OEM software must be sold with hardware, without it the licence is invalid.
The OEM is also tied to the hardware you buy it with, so if you bought it with a mouse and the mouse died the licence dies too.


In reality not a lot, no-ones ever going to chase you for it. Although bear in mind that Amazon is £19 inc delivery, Scan you need to add postage at £6.99 so it's cheaper to get it from Amazon unless you can collect it.

Marty_J

That's not true. OEM licences are for system builders, and generally mean that the software is solely for whatever hardware it is first installed on.

Microsoft sell thousands and thousands of OEM licences every year without selling any hardware with them.

[Deleted User]

One of the reasons the OEM versions are substantially cheaper is because whoever buys becomes responsible for giving technical support to the end user support. Hence why if you buy Windows OEM and have a problem that you call Microsoft for, you'll have to pay their standard telephone technical support charge (which isn't cheap).

ss4

28% of people have said other, if you did say this could you mention in this thread what you use/recommend

i think i'll be excluding avg, so at the moment i'll try avast, i would have tried antivir if it offered email scanning

cmonthehoops

Tried lots of free ones and best of the bunch has got to be Avira. AVG8 is far to bloated i am on 4mb broadband and it was like using dial up again awful.

Marty999

I was pleased with F-Secure and recommended that until I realised it slowed my PC down. I have now installed Kaspersky and the PC starts up in half the time and memory usage is 20-25% of what F-Secure required.