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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?"
linux?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Though technically I install it "over", not "on" Windows.
Amen brother. Ubuntu 9.10 is an awesome windows replacement. I silently switched my wife's laptop to it 4 weeks ago and she is happy as a clam. Wine install was brain-dead easy. office 2003 runs on it perfectly, and IE6 installed well for her to upload tax info to the state and feds.
She's an accountant and only uses Excel for spreadsheets that wont open in OO.o
Honestly there is no reason to not switch away from windows and it's virus/spyware riddled existence for a bulk of the people out there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Me too!
>>>Install a linux of some sort
Yep. And then I won't be able to run:
- My Dialup ISP (the dialup is okay but the web accelerator refuses to run)
- Games
- Atari or Nintendo emulators
- Flash
- Opera 10 (refuses to install)
- RealPlayer
- Ipod-encoded (MP4) video
But HEY at least I'm virus free!
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Better than Avast is Linux or OSX. The advantage of Linux over OSX is you don't have to buy a new computer, and you can run your Windows apps under Wine or, better yet, make it dual-boot and disable networking on the Windows side.
Viruses? I only see viruses when I'm cleaning out friends' Windows machines. Nobody else gets viruses.
Free Martian Whores!
The only thing you have to deal with is a daily ad that you can dismiss by hitting OK and it won't pop up for another 24 hours.
So... it's adware. That's what I'm trying to get rid of.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Yeah, I'm logged out. I don't want to mess up a good thing. What of it?
Anyway, Slashdot continues its steady towards becoming a Micro$haft advertising site. It is simply not possible to go more than eight hours on here without at least one thread that derails into a year-long M$-fellating-fest. Apparently, we're giving Micro$uck a free pass for the atrocity that was Windows 95 (a DOS shell that, even today, offers nothing over Windows 3.1). I guess we're also going to just forget about that whole "Windows 98" thing too. Second Edition? Please! And, uh, maybe the rest of you forgot about how god-awful Windows ME was (because apparently some morons thought Windows 98 was just too efficient, a laughable concept in its own right), or Vista, or -- yeah, I'm going to go there -- even XP. You can't tell me that back in 2001 a single one of you was posting about XP's "advantages" or how you've "signed up for perpetual beta" for the not one, not two, but THREE SERVICE PACKS released. Apparently, nobody on Slashdot dares speak of thing free-as-in-beer operating system called "Linux" that we all used to enjoy.
I'm not saying Linux is perfect -- far from it, in fact. But when was the last time you heard someone asking for antivirus advice for their Gentoo i686 install?
I'm sure the M$-fanboys will mod me down as a troll just as soon as they can stop ejaculating all over themselves about how great it is to install a new OS every seven years, but this desperately needed to be said. WAKE UP!