best anti-virus software

[WoodPeckr]

I've never paid a penny for AV yet and really have had no serious problems with the free AV apps out there.

My first PC came with a free year of McAfee that renewed for free the next two years before saying the next renewal would cost me. Then I went to Norton and got the 2001 version off Audiogalaxy 'pro bono' and used it till 2006 with a little help from the boys on Audiogalaxy. Norton 2001 served me well, in fact better than McAfee. In 2006 I got my corporate work version of XP Pro that came with 18 months of Avast. Been using Avast trouble free since then. Still have Avast on my laptop. Put Microsoft Security Essentials on my new ~4 month old desktop, after reading all the good reviews on it and like it.

That said I don't know why anyone would pay for AV. IMHO you are just throwing money away. I will admit that lately Windows is used very little, preferring to run Linux which is far more secure than Windows. It is very enjoyable to just surf and hit even 'suspect' sites with Linux and not worry about a thing! Something not possible with M$....

 

[vavog]

Kaspersky or ESET...

nuf said.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Heard the new Norton is no "resource hog" anymore. That's what was good about Norton 2001, it was no "resource hog" either. This was another reason I used Norton 2001 till 2006 because 2001 only drew 5% of my PC resources which wasn't bad back then. Norton 2002 and later years became the big "resource hogs".

I remember putting in Spy Sweeper and turning on all the bells & whistles....the farking app drew 40% of the PC's resources causing my old P2 to crawl and barely move. Ended up dumping Spy Sweeper because it wouldn't run right when Spy Sweeper was running.

 

[Tam69]

Been using Panda Cloud Antivirus (www.cloudantivirus.com) for many months now with zero problems. Highly recommend it to anyone that wants a good free product.