antivirus- free vs paid

charlieheard

I was in exactly the same position a couple of weeks ago. My Norton sub was due and I had to decide whether to renew, even though the software is no longer supported (though the virus updates are still available). It does seem a big step to drop an "old friend".

My first port of call was my favourite free utilities website. A great website, and well worth bookmarking. Someone in this forum recommended it a few months ago and it's been a godsend.

They recommend AVAST or AVG, saying AVG has occasional problems for a very small minority of people. So I tried AVAST, and had major problems with it taking over my CPU and causing the PC to run like a dog for hours on end. Had a look at their forums and found loads of threads with the same problem, but the AVAST reps were very unhelpful ("Your PC is busy for a reason - you find it").

So I dumped AVAST after 2 days and went for AVG, and have had no problems. It even found a couple of things that Norton hadn't. The only thing I miss the ability to do an automatic scan weekly, so I just have a scheduled task bring up the scanner and kick it off myself.

Just remember to unistall Norton before you install AVG and you should have no problems (I didn't and got loads of messages about scanners interfering with eachother)

moonrakerz

I used AVG until it let me down in a big way, tried Macafee (8/10) and Norton (5/10). Did a trawl of the web and eventually purchased BitDefender 9 :- It is simple to configure, auto updates VERY frequently and so far it hasn't conflicted with anything else - unlike Norton which seems to conflict with everything. And it is very reasonably priced.

http://www.hermanstreet.com/store/software-bit-defender-9-download.html

intel

moonrakerz wrote:

I used AVG until it let me down in a big way[/url]

Er what actually happened?

rotate

I'm currently using AntiVir personal edition,a free download from a German company,I downloaded it after reading recomendations from another site.However I have not come across many UK users,does anyone else use it?Combined with ZoneAlarm firewall and Spybot anti spyware.
I would say that the Norton Antivirus that came with this Dell slowed the machine down considerably.

Rascalator

I've been using AVG for ages - its very good. Never had any issues.

moonrakerz

intel wrote:

Er what actually happened?

My AVG let "Something" get in which had my PC trying to send a zillion e-mails a minute.
I had to re-format the drive to get rid of it - Luckily I had installed a second hard drive as a back up - All my docs, photos, music, etc, etc were backed up on that and that drive wasn't affected. Also had copies of a lot of my software on there as well which made it easier once I had put XP back in off the CDs.

Really recommend a second hard drive, saves a lot of heartache !

shammyjack

50p a week for the Worlds best AV is nothing .

Get a trial here

http://www.eset.com/home/home.htm

Once tried you will never use anything else.

shammy