QOTD: Is Free Antivirus as Good as Paid Software?
Does free antivirus do just as good a job?
This week there's been an awful lot of talk about free antivirus. Between Microsoft officially launching its Security Essentials software and Symantec essentially saying free antivirus sucks, there's been no shortage of differing opinions on the matter.
Microsoft isn't the first to offer free antivirus. MSE aside, you've got Avast and AVG, software that many of you say you use and much prefer over the likes of Norton or McAfee. That said, most of you know your way around the web and wouldn't be clicking on the big, blinking signs that say you've just won a cruise to the Caribbean or seven billion dollars in stock options.
Today's question of the day is do you think free antivirus is enough for the average computer user?
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lol, no anti virus whatsoever
Actually that would be better than having norton or symantec's appalling software installed :-o
avast is a good choice on a avergae pc- i had no issues since years on lots of machines with avast, but if you use linux and the free clamav antivirus this also a good choice
never had to get a paid anti-virus cause the free ones have done a great job so far...
why waste your money when there's no any difference? go free.
the anti-virus industry is the same with PCs as with people. pharmaceutic companies make their own diseases. same with the antivirus companies that provide our "protection"... that is why u need a daily update of definitions, and that is why threads like this exist (to pay or not to pay). its a good business, that's all.
Dont waste memory, hard-drive space or CPU cycles running an anti-virus!! Use linux
Otherwise, I have been using AVG Free for the past 6 years without any problems. It picks up all viruses (that i have known about) on my windows PC. And my bthomhub goes someway to providing a firewall, although i run ZoneAlarm Free just to be safe!!
seeing as things like comodo are commercial software just free for home users, free must be at least as good as paid for protection, and then better cos you're not paying!
I've never had any problems with Avast, AVG or Comodo and I've used them all on different builds but I have had massive issues with mcafee and norton/symantec either not detecting viruses, gobbling up resources or for some reason just being incompatible with games or software and stopping things working... the only paid one i ever liked was NOD32.
The number of problems I've had with Norton is greater then the number of viruses I've ever found on any computer. The software is just to invasive and I had to remove it completely from one of my works computers because it was making the system take 30 minutes to start up, and that was even after I disabled the system that was meant to be causing it. I use Avast myself and its always been reliable, its never let a virus cause any problems, quickly detecting and getting rid of it.
I currently use AVG free (of charge) on my Win7 partition and Klamav on Fedora 11. No problems for me. I had f-secure for a few year on a lisence though my college. I could get that renewed but I'm just not worried enough about it to go through the hassel. I'm not sure either what the college IT people would think about installing that on an operating system that isn't released yet. If all the free antivirus people went under I would prob go back to f-secure (even if I couldn't get it through college). It seems to not hog too much system resources or be invasive (sometimes it has a problem where it uses like 200 MB ram though).
yes, I used Norton utils and AV, while it was still managed by the great Peter Norton, the author... Then it was taken over by symantec, and they could not leave it 'as is'.. they just HAD to add fancy decorations here, extra features there, expand more stuff to 'make it better'.....
Result?? what was once a 'lean machine' become overworked, resource hungry, and the following problems with updates etc, just made people go elsewhere...
Avira Antivir is an excellent free Antivirus. I find AVG too bloated and always recommend Avira to anyone that asks. Its neat and simple and doesn't use alot of system resources (avgnt.exe) using 2,072k as I write this. You get a popup now and again when the application updates but I find clicking "ok" and having it disappear no problem considering its free!
Virus scans are fast too - always picks up viruses from pendrives and the like.
To the question is paid software better - not for a home user. It's just not nessessary. In a business enviroment on corporate it's much different due to the extended support needed and this is where the AV companies make their money. Shame Microsoft doesn't apply that model to win7! But hey at least they are almost giving it away at the prelaunch price a few weeks ago.
Hammeh - I don't wish to use linux as I cannot be bothered with the command line nonsense - always there is a "use linux" post in these discussions! To go through the hassle of learning a new O/S to save a few CPU cycles is ridiculous - if I needed to go to those lengths i'd rather upgrade my hardware.
from a paid software perspective you cannot beat NOD32.