Dependable Free Anti-Virus Programs

[Chebasaz]

I've been using Trend Micro for the last four or five years and been pleased with the results. It's $39 a year, which is cheap enough to load up on all of my computers. Daily definition updates and it hasn't failed me yet. Combined with Spybot, the computer is as safe as I'm willing to make it.

[P00057870]

Thanks for your input!

[rickyjo]

Just remember, although Norton, Mcafee and some others are huge resource hogs all the freebies that are well known (avira, avg, avast) all use about half, avira being the lightest. It's critical that you have a 2nd program as well (only let one run by itself!), superantispyware is the best.

As for a previous comment about the well known anti-virus software being unable to deal with new viruses, this is true, but not usually for more than several hours. It is unlikely that there will not be a very quick update for the virus you are infected with. Also heuristics catch the ones that are not discovered yet more often than not, especially if you have more than one program checking.

[nleamons]

From my basic knoweledge with computers that I have earned through college, work, and research, here are my opinions on antivirus programs. The antivirus program that I use is Microsoft Security Essentials(MSE), which has been very successful in decting viruses and other types of malware. I would never use Norton it is will slow your computer down, but I have read that the newest version is not suppose to be quite as bad as the older version. I read that McAfee misses a lot. I have found AVG to slow down some computers. I tried, Avast for a while, but I disliked it, so I switched back to MSE. If one has the money to afford an antivirus, then I would go with Kaspersky, since it is often cheaper and not as resource hogging as other antivirus programs. I have not used Trend Mirco, but I have heard that some people had trouble with it. I noticed that some people got tricked into downloading what appears to be an antivirus program, but it is not.