Poll: *** The All New Windows AV Thread - Keep All AV Questions in Here ***

What AV do you use?

  • Total voters
    812
Tried Sophos Home for a week, It was pretty good to be honest. Fairly lightweight and bloat free.

My only gripe with it is the regular definition updates, slowed down quite a bit during gaming sessions. Otherwise a very decent free AV.
Back to using Windows Defender.
 
Dimi said:
Tried Sophos Home for a week, It was pretty good to be honest. Fairly lightweight and bloat free.

My only gripe with it is the regular definition updates, slowed down quite a bit during gaming sessions. Otherwise a very decent free AV.
Back to using Windows Defender.
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Defender has quite a high performance hit to a lot of third party AVs, even Sophos does a lot better then Defender on performance, take a look here http://www.av-comparatives.org/performance-test-october-2015/ .

I wonder why a lot of users go with Defender over third party AV when they are lighter then Defender and with better detection rate, most are free as well.

Maybe one day somebody will give me a valid reason why Defender is better.
 
Elevon said:
...Maybe one day somebody will give me a valid reason why Defender is better.
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It doesn't have to be better it has to be good enough.

I have no doubt there are superior products. Even free ones. But for me though most of them have a lot of nagging, and even when all that is turned off, they seem to require more support than Defender.

I wouldn't use Defender for a business or mission critical applications, or high risk machines. But then I don't have any like that.

Not referring to your link. But in general I am slightly dubious of "other reviews" as my experience often does not match their results. We had years of reviews of Norton being amazing, but the reality was very different. (yes I know that was years ago).
 
OspreyO said:
It doesn't have to be better it has to be good enough.

I have no doubt there are superior products. Even free ones. But for me though most of them have a lot of nagging, and even when all that is turned off, they seem to require more support than Defender.

I wouldn't use Defender for a business or mission critical applications, or high risk machines. But then I don't have any like that.

Not referring to your link. But in general I am slightly dubious of "other reviews" as my experience often does not match their results. We had years of reviews of Norton being amazing, but the reality was very different. (yes I know that was years ago).
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I guess when you mean "good enough" that is down to the user in question, personally I'm happy with my Bitdefender Total Security 2016(I got a great deal paid £8 for two year multi licence just before xmas which you register via Bitdefender website).

As to nags, paid ones don't have that, some free ones don't either ie Bitdefender free, but I see your point there.

Personally most of us spend a lot of money on PC hardware and software and I feel AV security should be considered an important aspect regardless of user awareness/skill level, especially when they are free or cheap in general.

I've all my important stuff backed up anyway but still rather be "safe then sorry" as they say and go with a superior AV product.

End of the day I guess it's down to the individual.
 
Using AVG at the moment but getting slightly annoyed by the constant pop ups asking me to change certain settings, install the AVG tool bar etc. Otherwise I'm finding it to be pretty okay. Might switch back to Microsoft Security essentials though if these pop ups persist.
 
CaNsA said:
I've binned off AVG free, it's become a bloated mess again.

For the past couple of months I have been using "Avast For Business - Free" and I'm pretty darn impressed with it.

Webgui monitoring for all devices registered.

Deffo worth checking it out.
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theMilitant said:
Using AVG at the moment but getting slightly annoyed by the constant pop ups asking me to change certain settings, install the AVG tool bar etc. Otherwise I'm finding it to be pretty okay. Might switch back to Microsoft Security essentials though if these pop ups persist.
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Just come into this thread to look for an alternative to AVG after getting fed up with yet another of its random daily popups :rolleyes:

So it seems that either Avast or Sophos free are the current recommendations? Which is going to have the lowest impact on gaming and development work? (My main gripe with AVG is that it will randomly popup when I'm in the middle of a game, causing it to drop out to the desktop - not ideal in the middle of a big fight when playing online!)

Has anyone used the "f-secure SAFE" which comes with Virgin media? Never heard of it before, so a bit skeptical...
 
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Haggisman said:
Has anyone used the "f-secure SAFE" which comes with Virgin media? Never heard of it before, so a bit skeptical...
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F-Secure might have been around longer than you have. They're more commonly (or were) found in corporate establishments and the public sector rather than the home market and were highly regarded a few years ago, but I've not looked recently.

I've no idea about the SAFE product itself, but F-Secure in general are perfectly fine.
 
Went from Norton many many years ago, used to grind my old pc to a halt so jumped too AVG many years ago and have been a long term Avast! user ever since. Its yet to let me down but nothing is better than basic prevention (being cautious with email attachments, websites, downloads etc)

Haggisman said:
So it seems that either Avast or Sophos free are the current recommendations? Which is going to have the lowest impact on gaming and development work?
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I have only used Sophos Corporate but I use Avast! at home and use it in silent mode so you never see / hear from it. You get the occasional offer to upgrade it but only at start up and you have to re-register it once a year but other than that it doesn't make a peep :)
 
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I've been using Defender but thought I'd try Sophos Home seeing as its free. Found a few things defender and MB missed, easy to use and updates every hour or so. I only put it on last night so early days with it LOL
 
I presume that with a modern version of Windows the following options are the same thing?

-Microsoft Security Essentials

-I do not run any AV other than OS built in (E.g. Windows Defender)
 
Still using Eset Smart Security v9 on W10 and no real issues so far, my laptop does start with protection disabled for some reason which I can't seem to fix but I just enable it and everything is fine.

I also had a minor problem where the firewall was blocking file sharing across my network so had to manually add the IP address of the device that was trying to connect and then it all worked as it should.

Stoner81.
 
Installed BitDefender free edition on a PC recently and noticed it had a 30 day count down relating to not being logged in to a My BitDefender account.

Does it need to be connected with an account to keep program active? As I'll have to tell owner to create one if so.
 
Bane said:
Installed BitDefender free edition on a PC recently and noticed it had a 30 day count down relating to not being logged in to a My BitDefender account.

Does it need to be connected with an account to keep program active? As I'll have to tell owner to create one if so.
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Yes. There's no need to give it legit details. If you do, you'll just receive spam from BD.
 
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