Which anti-virus?

[Udders]

There seems to be a great choice out there! Can I get some recomendations from the ones who know about these things?
Ta.

 

[wessie]

Windows Security Essentials - does AV & anti-spyware.

I use it on 2 machines.

Previously I have used AVG free & Avast free but they have both bloated as far as using your PC's resources

 

[rc mad]

pretty much the same experience as wessie but i also tried virgin medias antivirus.

Right on all accounts, they slowed the pc down a lot when installed. I've since switched over to security essentials and it just works with minimal intervention from me, doesn't even slow the computer down when doing scheduled scans

 

[geordie458]

Avira for me. Its free and inconspicuous.

 

[torq]

I have used Avast free edition for last 3 years and although latest version is a tad bloated it's not let me down once.

 

[Ash]

AVG Free

 

[Rasher]

For freebies I have found AVG and Avast pretty good.

I have never liked anything Symantec and they seem to have reverse engineered the Midas touch as whenever they buy up some company for its IP / products they seem to cock them right up!

 

[swissrob]

kaspersky - wins nearly every AV test.

TIP: go to amazon and buy a 3 user licence for the 2010 version for about £9 then just do an update.

 

[wessie]

kaspersky - wins nearly every AV test.

TIP: go to amazon and buy a 3 user licence for the 2010 version for about £9 then just do an update.

Pay? Are you mad?

The other thing I like about the Windows thing I recommended is that it is pretty idiot proof, as my IT clown of a son has demonstrated. This is an important consideration when you consider who made the original post

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

+ another for MS Security essentials. Its light weight idiot proof and free, It also scores very highly in protection tests. If I could license it for work I would change all the machines over to it, all 400 of them, that's how good I think it is.

 

[casperfelix]

AVG Free

I agree. Though your best answer maybe to ditch Windows as your operating system and run with Linux. There are thousands of versions, they're free (as is most if not all the software you run on them) and they're far more secure than Windows. Few Linux users bother with an AV!

 

[STUBBS]

another for avg free

 

[Udders]

Sorted! I loaded the AVG free jobbie and it found 2 trojan horses ans 2 viruses! The boys laptop should run a bit better now. Cheers.

 

[Seamaster]

I use Panda cloud antivirus, I have tried AVG, Avast and kaspersky but have gone back to Panda

 

[swissrob]

Pay? Are you mad?

The other thing I like about the Windows thing I recommended is that it is pretty idiot proof, as my IT clown of a son has demonstrated. This is an important consideration when you consider who made the original post

not at all... i have a .rar file with over 500 viruses, kaspersky and dr.web found all of them, norton found about 350, avg free, panda, ms essentials found in the region of 320.

i would actually prefer dr.web but it has too many pop ups and requires setting up, rather than a install and forget.

i prefer the kaspersky firewall so for £3 for a year i am happy with that. £3 as my mates also share the license.

kaspersky change the keys all the time so forget a torrent version btw.

 

[JohnnyOldBoy]

Pay? Are you mad?

The other thing I like about the Windows thing I recommended is that it is pretty idiot proof, as my IT clown of a son has demonstrated. This is an important consideration when you consider who made the original post

Wessie,

I just had desktop in running slowly. It had AVG on it so I ran a full clean and scan and it made no difference to boot up and file retrieval time. Uninstalled AVG and installed McAfee which found 2 trojans, a whole bunch of registry errors and 2 tracking cookies from an application no longer on the machine.

I have a feeling that AVG is OK if you are just using windows, adobe, msoffice but if it's a machine where kids are downloading different things AVG lets stuff through. Only a feeling but when I put McAfee on I don't get people coming back.

All fixed now and a happy neighbour.

 

[wessie]

Wessie,

I just had desktop in running slowly. It had AVG on it so I ran a full clean and scan and it made no difference to boot up and file retrieval time. Uninstalled AVG and installed McAfee which found 2 trojans, a whole bunch of registry errors and 2 tracking cookies from an application no longer on the machine.

I have a feeling that AVG is OK if you are just using windows, adobe, msoffice but if it's a machine where kids are downloading different things AVG lets stuff through. Only a feeling but when I put McAfee on I don't get people coming back.

All fixed now and a happy neighbour.

I'm on my 5th PC in 16 years and I've never had one crippled by a virus. I used to work for a large multi-national corporation and saw how useless various paid-for solutions were. The university where I'm based now and past public-sector employers have all been done over by viruses despite paying the likes of Symantec & McAfee.

I have a son. He's 20 now and rarely uses my computers as he has (or had until he lost it last week) a smartphone. I had several years of protecting my PCs from the wanderlust of a hormonal teenager. The free versions of AVG then Avast with Spybot protected my machines well for some time. They got bloated so I switched to the one-stop-shop product from Microsoft Security Essentials and all is well. There's a bit of a lag when the machine first boots up but once up & running there is little delay.

 

[Dickieboy]

Another vote for Microsoft security essentials, I go on the premise that I'm using a Microsoft operating system so who better to provide software for it than Microsoft themselves, I feel fairly certain that the machine runs better for it because it is less intrusive than anything else I've used before.

And a quick heads up - The first service pack for Windows 7 is now available for download from Windows Update.