Best of the Free Anti-virus Choices?

iamjoltman writes "I've been looking to replace the McAfee anti-virus on my parent's XP machine. So, I've been looking at the three free anti-virus choices, AVG Free Edition, avast! Home Edition and AntiVir Personal Edition. I know there are other options, but I believe any others are only on-demand scanners, and that's not an option. So, what does the Slashdot crowd think is the best of these choices? Keep in mind, I'm only looking in anti-virus, I'll go elsewhere for firewall or malware protection."

Comments

AVG Camp

[karrde]

I don't know if it's the best, but I'm in the AVG Free camp myself. Auto-updating was big. nice side effect that you can't really turn that part off. I work on family and friends computers, and I've started dropping this on thier computers. Espically when I'm working on them because of a virus. That way I know if I have to work on the computer again, it shouldn't be because they've contracted another virus.

Re:Obligatory (this *is* Slashdot, after all):

[b17bmbr]

this isn't too bad either.

This is a really bad post

[bneals]

I hate when people think that using a different OS means that you are totally safe. I don't care if it is Linux or OSX, viruses are out there and anti-virus software should be used. There is no question that (1) Windows is more susceptible and (2) that there are more viruses for Windows than other OS's, but no OS is completely safe. You are sending a very bad message by implying that using Linux or some other OS will void the need to protect your computer from viruses. Your hatred for MS is blinding you.

Re:This is a really bad post

[Lord Laraby]

I guess it's acceptable for people with real OS's like Linux to offload the job of properly configuring their systems deamons and services to a virus protection tool. (<- Sarcasm) But, really now... If your non-root non-administrative applications have no privileges and your users are not running under a high rights accounts, you are protected. No hard can be doen to your system. All viruses ever reported on Linux boxes have been the result of running the virus under a privileged account - easily avoided.

*nix is not equal to M$ windows -- So, why try to make it fit the mold of windows? That is: windows is essentially a graphical virus on top of old/legacy DOS interface to a totally insecure thinly designed massive monolithic 16-bit->32-bit kernel thunk.
Of course you need to protect this virus from other viruses. It's too poorly designed and coded to survive against the intruders! Duhh...

Nope! I'm not gonna need to get a Virus Scanner for my Linux box. In fact I actually copied several of the windows variations into my home directory to reverse-engineer. :-)

LL
Shampoo on your real hair... Real poo on your sham hair!

Re:Firefox?

[kextyn]

Because all viruses are transmitted through email and web pages and Microsoft patches EVERY flaw in their products, right?