free antivirus (OT)

AV from MS will be available soon for free.

Helen has just got a new laptop (under £200 ex display - ie nicely burnt in - at Currys!) to replace her venerable old Compaq. We have always used AVG free antivirus but have begun to find the interminable updates practically every time you switch on a bit of a pain. Hopefully this process should be completed a bit quicker on the new machine, but my question is what is the competition - principally Avast and AntiVir - like in this respect?

In my experience all the free virus checkers are worth exactly what you pay for them ;-) A couple of people I know who charge substantial amounts for disinfecting virus infested PC's like them a lot. That said I guess that they are better than nothing.

Frequent updates can save a lot of grief, most good antivirus programs will allow you to override the frequency, doing so means that you might not be any better protected than using a free program.

The Best programs such as BitDefender and Kaspersky update unobtrusively and are not intensive memory hogs like some of the other programs. The pay for versions of the programs you mention do not do very well in a recent review, see:

More information can be obtained from these links:

Just want something simple that'll go quietly about its business in the background and not tie up too much in the way of resources - ie not the infinitely 'customisable' bloatware that is Norton.

NHH

So it should be - surely even Microsoft wouldn't have the gall to peddle a vulnerable operating system and then charge you for protection!

NHH

Nick,

I have gone from AVG to Avast, it does not appear to slow things up like AVG and sits in the back ground. Its been up and running for a couple of months with no problems and I have it set on auto upgrade, I'm happy with it.

Mart>>

I've used both and I think you could well be right about Avast. I used to get other wierd problems which may or may not have been due to AVG. I'm happy with Avast.

I have also moved from AVG to Avast and had no problems, updates work well I have it on 4 comps/laptop without a hitch. Also when first installed it does a full scan before windows starts up and has found infections on all but one machine that had been protected previously with AVG.

Regards

Rob

Oddly enough though, I noticed that when switching from Norton to AVG, then ditto when switching from AVG to Avast. The sceptic in me wonders if these things *have* to prove that they can find viruses that the others missed.

Shh they might be reading this!