Best free AV

Elevon said:
AV comparatives and other AV sites that test AV software,end of the day common sense is where your money should be ;).
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But could you please find the exact "AV comparatives and other AV sites that test AV software", please don't rush for me though, it might take you a while ;)
 
exia said:
But could you please find the exact "AV comparatives and other AV sites that test AV software", please don't rush for me though, it might take you a while ;)
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You can look yourself its not hard,besides if you want to waste your money on a paid AV that's s fine its your money not mine ;).

Also consider no AV is 100% foolproof, all AV companies are always playing catchup to new viruses that are always being released into the wild.

Common sense goes a long way,what I'm saying using common sense and a good OS like Win7 x64 with UAC enabled,AV and something like Anti-Malwarebytes goes a long way to offer very good protection(most users have a hardware firewall too),you don't NEED to pay for AV or protection.
 
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Elevon said:
Never had any issues with Avast 6 ,it's a proven fact paid versions offer nothing over free ones protection wise,I even leave it on in gaming because you don't notice it.
Avast 6 free version has some nice features ie gaming mode options,low resources to name a few.
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Its also a proven fact to me that hundreds who have come to us to drop off their PC with a virus has had either one of these ffree AV such as Avast, AVG or MSSE. Totally up to date with the latest definitions.
Literally only a handful have had a paid for and updated AV such Norton, Kaspersky, NOD etc.

The only exception to the rule is Mcafee, which is ****.

So my real world experience has shown me that if you want good less hassle protection get a paid for AV.
If you know what you're doing and are willing to run regular maintenance such as malwarebytes and superantispyware (which to be fair you should do anyway) you can get by with a free AV.

But point is, paid for AV DO give you more protection. In my experience that is.
 
sswats said:
Its also a proven fact to me that hundreds who have come to us to drop off their PC with a virus has had either one of these ffree AV such as Avast, AVG or MSSE. Totally up to date with the latest definitions.
Literally only a handful have had a paid for and updated AV such Norton, Kaspersky, NOD etc.

The only exception to the rule is Mcafee, which is ****.

So my real world experience has shown me that if you want good less hassle protection get a paid for AV.
If you know what you're doing and are willing to run regular maintenance such as malwarebytes and superantispyware (which to be fair you should do anyway) you can get by with a free AV.

But point is, paid for AV DO give you more protection. In my experience that is.
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The best protection is a user who uses his brain whilst on the internet, paid for AV won't help there. MSSE etc are fine if the person is even vaguely aware of what a virus is as frankly I wouldn't touch your recommended AV with a bargepole, nor any other Norton product from the historical problems they've created for me.
 
sswats said:
Its also a proven fact to me that hundreds who have come to us to drop off their PC with a virus has had either one of these ffree AV such as Avast, AVG or MSSE. Totally up to date with the latest definitions.
Literally only a handful have had a paid for and updated AV such Norton, Kaspersky, NOD etc.

The only exception to the rule is Mcafee, which is ****.

So my real world experience has shown me that if you want good less hassle protection get a paid for AV.
If you know what you're doing and are willing to run regular maintenance such as malwarebytes and superantispyware (which to be fair you should do anyway) you can get by with a free AV.





But point is, paid for AV DO give you more protection. In my experience that is.
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We could argue this all day,I agree some AV software companies are better then others.

Detection

Most of the free products we tested put up identical or nearly identical malware detection scores to the paid varietals put out by the same company. But we did see some subtle differences. One notable example is Panda Cloud Antivirus: The free Cloud Antivirus and Panda's for-pay Antivirus Pro 2011 performed about the same on the signature-based malware detection tests, but Antivirus Pro did a better job in "real world" malware detection tests that help determine how well a product can block brand-new threats.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/210589/free_vs_fee_free_and_paid_antivirus_programs_compared.html .

Point is you can get by with a free AV just as well as a paid AV ,you could buy a paid AV like my brother did and still get a virus(yes it was Nortons) he has switched to Kaspersky.

We ALL KNOW user is the weakest link not the AV,any good user has layers of protection(and common sense) not just an AV ,unfortunately users come in many shapes and forms.
 
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Elevon said:
You can look yourself its not hard,besides if you want to waste your money on a paid AV that's s fine its your money not mine ;).

Also consider no AV is 100% foolproof, all AV companies are always playing catchup to new viruses that are always being released into the wild.

Common sense goes a long way,what I'm saying using common sense and a good OS like Win7 x64 with UAC enabled,AV and something like Anti-Malwarebytes goes a long way to offer very good protection(most users have a hardware firewall too),you don't NEED to pay for AV or protection.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that one thing is better than the other, or that common sense won't prevent a situation. Neither did I say anyone 'needs' to pay for an AV.

I'm a test engineer and when someone comes out with "it's a proven fact paid versions offer nothing over free ones protection wise," I look for the test reports/evidence that proves it. And yes, I have looked and I don't see anything matching your 'fact'.

- AV-TEST Product Review and Certification Report - 2011/Q1

Yes the free software out there is good, heck I have a large number of systems with MSE / Avast, bar 3 that have Norton. But from my experience and from what I'm reading, free software and paid software are in two different categories, and there's no evidence to say the latter is worse.

Alright I'll stop now :)
 
sswats said:
Its also a proven fact to me that hundreds who have come to us to drop off their PC with a virus has had either one of these ffree AV such as Avast, AVG or MSSE. Totally up to date with the latest definitions.
Literally only a handful have had a paid for and updated AV such Norton, Kaspersky, NOD etc.

The only exception to the rule is Mcafee, which is ****.

So my real world experience has shown me that if you want good less hassle protection get a paid for AV.
If you know what you're doing and are willing to run regular maintenance such as malwarebytes and superantispyware (which to be fair you should do anyway) you can get by with a free AV.

But point is, paid for AV DO give you more protection. In my experience that is.
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I'm quite shocked nobody has called you out on it - so I will :p

Avast said:
World’s most popular antivirus software: 165,099,577
registrations and growing.
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I'm sure I read that they have more users than all the paid AV companies have COMBINED. Obviously other ones such as Avira, MSE & AVG must have pretty high usage numbers too.

In other words, what you are seeing is more a comparison of the number of users of each AV product. Not exactly which ones are more effective. More users means more potential infections from missing a piece of malware.
 
Those registration numbers mean diddly squat, I used to re-register Avast whenever I would do a fresh install rather than spending time digging up an old registration code.
 
having tried all the free ones, my favourite at the moment is Avira. Pretty easy on resources, updates actually update rather than just stalling and no viruses here for years. Each to their own...having Avira means I haven't bothered to mess with others.
 
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