Best free Antivirus??

superscaper

Bongedone wrote: »

Computer Shopper magazine ran a head to head test of most virus checkers a few months back. They tested them by throwing virus's as them. Avast failed lots of the tests whilst AVG passed most. They rated AVG above Norton. I removed Avast and replaced with AVG after seeing the failure rate.

The one problem with AVG is that it runs a full test at start-up which can be quite slow. I disabled this and only run it now and then.

I'd take that lab test with a pinch of salt. Some of its results completely contradict every other lab test out there, especially lab testers that specialise in nothing else but testing anti virus software. If I remember correctly NOD32 didn't come out too well according to Computer Shopper. So it put me off changing over to it for a while but when I actually looked into other tests by professionals NOD32 comes out as one of the best and their other results don't really match that computer shopper test.

Bongedone

I have heard NOD32 is good.

Art_2

I have used Norton which is resource hungry but for the past few years I have used AVG.

I find AVG very good and the automatic updates are frequent and keep it up to date with the latest threats. Also it's free which is a bonus.

Regards,
Art.

spakkker

Hi I agree with free4440273 about the over reliance on a/v programs. I recently helped rescue a friend's laptop which he had been using for two YEARS without any a/v or cleaning programs before grinding to a stop! AVG found only 83 viruses.

chaddy7604

Hey, thanks for the positive feedback from those that helped

alanobrien

One other comment. In my experience of running most of the free antivirus programs on both laptops and desktops i found Avast to be more resource hungry than AVG.
It was very noticable on a couple of the laptops, which performed better overall when switched back to AVG. Probably less of an issue for newer machines though.

random456

alanobrien wrote: »

One other comment. In my experience of running most of the free antivirus programs on both laptops and desktops i found Avast to be more resource hungry than AVG.
It was very noticable on a couple of the laptops, which performed better overall when switched back to AVG. Probably less of an issue for newer machines though.

That's strange, I always found the opposite, it's actually one of the reasons I switched to Avast in 2005-at that time I had a p3 with 128mb ram which I only got rid of this June, currently have a Philips x67 dual core 1gb ram, and Avast has never slowed either down, I find it updates and scans much quicker than Avg but everyone has their preferences...I'm just very very happy with Avast!

cwp500

AVG is the best and most intuitive. The interface is clunky but if you set it to update and run automatically you never have a problem.

Tried AVASt and it pulled up false positives and slowed my pc down at the same time, dont like it.

Definitely also use a good firewall; ZONEALARM is free
Anti spyware; use lavasoft AD-AWARE, and download SPYBOT and SPYWAREBLASTER.

You can also do free deep scans on the Panda and Trend Micro sites.

I never buy this stuff when you can get it for nothing with the same effectiveness but less flashy interface.

random456

Never had a false pos with Avast...agree re Panda online scan, I used to use this back in the day when I had Norton (eeeek!) and found it to very thoroughly scan my machine. It did take a long time but did the job properly and found stuff that Norton missed. I seem to remember it having a well documented issue with a couple of false positives but this has since been rectified by Panda.

Quasar

Donnie wrote: »

Positive feedback?

Of course.... :rolleyes: Same old regurgitated advice.

Use AVG.

PS. Everyone other than that chaddy moron should ignore my advice.

Why do you have to throw insults around? Nobody else has complained about giving chaddy some advice. We're here to help each other, not to be grim. But hey, if that's what you need to feel clever... to each his own eh?