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What Free Antivirus Do You Install On Windows?
Techman83 writes "After years of changing between AVG Free + Avast, it's coming time to find a new free alternative for friends/relatives who run Windows. AVG and Avast have been quite good, but are starting to bloat out in size, and also becoming very misleading. Avast recently auto updated from 4.8 to 5 and now requires you to register (even for the free version) and both are making it harder to actually find the free version. Is this the end of reasonable free antivirus, or is there another product I can entrust to keep the 'my computer's doing weird things' calls to a minimum?"
Techman83 writes "...AVG and Avast have been quite good, but are starting to bloat out in size..."
Um, in case you haven't noticed, more viruses, exploits and malware are coming out all the time.
I'd be very surprised if ANY antivirus software got smaller.
In fact, I'd be highly suspicious.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
Yes, the registration process has been greatly simplified. If only I didn't have to dig through the options to disable voice announcements...
Ignore this signature. By order.
I used to used to get my parents to buy Norton for their home PC and remote support them. But if the years subscription was up they wouldn't have the latest protection until I was around to do the upgrade.
...I wish 3rd party software would integrate into the windows update system, it would save a lot of bother (and pop-us, nag screens and update checking tasks loaded at startup).
I eventually went free as Norton started causing more problems than it was supposed to solve. Originally I rolled out AVG but that too had yearly requirements to upgrade. I switched all the family members I support a few months ago to the microsoft solution and "it just works", having the definitions and program updates rolled into the windows update has saved a lot of hassle. It being low resource usage is also a major plus. Everyone is happy.
and I have gotten a virus in ages.
That you know of.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
If a product even bothers to tell you about tracking cookies, it's more about religion than security, and should be avoided.
It's also the whole monopoly thing. They got into big trouble for bundling a free browser into windows. Because, I mean, what OS actually comes with a browser? (Of course things were a little different in 1995.)
Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
You mean I can download my anti-virus software from an oddly named third party that I've never heard of? Forgive me if I pass.
Yeah...if I'm gaming, I want to game. There are enough configuration issues as it is running them in their native environment...I don't need to be adding WINE into the mix.
I run Linux on my laptops, but my gaming rig runs Windows 7.
Viruses? I only see viruses when I'm cleaning out friends' Windows machines. Nobody else gets viruses.
I only see viruses when I'm cleaning out machines belonging to friends that surf the web willy-nilly without using common sense.
Living With a Nerd
I'll second the plug for MS Security Essentials. My current machine came with a three year subscription to McAfee. It was basically "free to me" - but it was utter crap. It wanted me to reboot about once a week to install something (at one point they even emailed everyone registered with a "we're sorry" note because it went through 2 weeks of a reboot every day). I removed it in favor of another "free to me" version - Symantec. That one was because our work license has provisions for home use. It was better than McAfee in that it didn't ever ask for a reboot, but as people know it slows your machine down more than it should. As soon as MS Security Essentials shipped, I dumped that "free to me" Symantec and have never looked back. My wife, both kids, and my machine are all running MSE. I even signed up for the perpetual beta so I am testing the newest version on the machine I am typing this on. I really wouldn't even bother with any other one at this point.
Because hearing "VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED" is a moodkiller during sex.
That's right. If you:
why would you be more insecure under Windows than you be doing the same thing under OS X or Linux? Sure, the greater market share of Windows leads to more effort being put into creating malware for it, and that presumably increases the overall risk slightly. But that's a minor point. In general terms, used properly, a Windows system running without an antivirus package is adequately secure.
The problem is that Windows users tend to have terrible security hygiene. They turn security features off, never update, and click the dancing bunnies. That's a separate, social issue. Never try to apply a technical solution to a social problem.
These days, the Windows security model is pretty good; you can attach a security descriptor to practically any kernel object, and the NT kernel has supported ACLs since day one. Slashdot needs to stop living in 1999. We're not talking about Windows 98. You can't crash a machine by pinging it, and it doesn't blue screen every day. Hell, you can even keep it up long than 49.7 days!
Bashing Windows today for the faults of the system a decade just makes you look ridiculous. It's like bashing Linux for not having hardware hot-plugging, or bashing Macs for not having preemptive multitasking. It's ludicrous. You want to bash Microsoft for pervasive DRM? Fine. You want to bash them for outrageous market segmentation? You want to bash them for their traditional embrace-extend-extinguish approach to standards? Fine. Want to bash them for still not having a real package manager in the OS? fine. Those are all still issues. But security and robustness aren't.
I had a similar realization once. The way I explain it:
Antivirus == Washing your hands
Software Patches == Regular doctor visits
On the other hand:
Shady porn sites == Cheep hookers
Clicking random links == Sharing needles
A few easy prevention techniques plus avoiding the "seedier" places go a long way.