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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?"
I still use Avast. Oh noes, it took me 2 minutes to fill out the little form. It takes up few resources, it has updates for it nearly every day, it's free as in beer, and I have gotten a virus in ages. What's not to like?
Living With a Nerd
Avira Anti-vir. It is good, fully functioned with updates, custom scheduled scans and on access scanning. 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. Also it uses up half the resources of AVG, McAfee, Norton.
Obviously you've never actually used Avast. You've always had to register for the free version, and renew the regsitration once a year. They're giving it away for free, I honestly don't see registering as a big deal.
And the new version is actually a lot better, it finally detects rootkits... If you're looking for something that actually does its job and yet doesn't take up any space or processing power, I doubt you'll find anything...
If you're gonna pay for your operating system, and then complain about free antiviruses, you might want to consider changing to linux...
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
Excellent [buy v1agra] product. I haven't have any malware [|\|iger1an 419] detected since I installed it [install Antivirus 2009 today!].
I've been trying this out on my home computers so far and its definitely less resource intensive than previous AV solutions I've used. I haven't gotten infected with anything lately (that I know of) so I don't know how well it handles infections yet.
Actual web page is here and you can read up on it a bit here.
I have heard good things about MSE from several people, but I haven't tried it myself.
I respectfully disagree with your notion that Kaspersky is better than MSE. I had Kaspersky's basic anti-virus for 2 years before MSE came out, and it was a terrible resource hog. And not just during scans; the actual real-time protection would increase the time to open a video file from ~2 seconds after double-clicking to ~15 seconds.
Additionally, when it detects a suspicious file, the program issues the most gut-wrenching squealing noise I've ever heard. And it does this by default; you have to go into settings to disable the noise.
[/anecdote]
At work (a university) the central IT has chosen to license Sophos. It is, well, crap to put it mildly and takes up amazing amounts of resources. So, instead we use Security Essentials on many systems. Works well, it has successfully stopped viruses that users have tried to get. Pretty light on resources over all, not the lightest weight program I've seen but up there.
Best one for free I've seen. Personally ESET NOD32 is my favourite and what I license for home, but if the price requirement is $0, then MSE is what I use.
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.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/first-look-microsoft-security-essentials-impresses.ars
An in-depth look at Microsoft Security Essentials, it made me decide to try it out on my girlfriend's laptop (I run OS X myself) and it's worked great.
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
Well, I can say it alerted me to one attempted drive-by trojan install, isolated the file, and deleted it, all before I did anything to react to the initial notice. First time I've gotten any sort of notice not related to tracking cookies in a few years.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
If a product even bothers to tell you about tracking cookies, it's more about religion than security, and should be avoided.
Microsoft Security Essentials. It's really the only choice imo. All the others are trying to sell you something. Now, if you're willing to pay, there are perhaps better choices. The most important thing to remember is to not take it too awful seriously. All AV sucks, badly. It's reactive and it only detects a small percentage of the naughty things. It's the only option, but it sucks. MSSE is good.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
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.
I could live without an on-access scan (tell your download manager to scan downloaded files), but Clamwin is completely unusable, IMHO, because it uses up much more system memory, and takes 4X as long to scan compared to the more common Free AVs.
If you want real, free antivirus, go with MoonSecure (v2.x), which is GPL, does on-access scanning, and uses the ClamAV database. It does (momentarily) use up a lot of memory, and slow down the system, but only when first starting up, or updating definitions. Other than that, it's no more of a dog than any other free AV. Free for commercial purposes, likely to have definitions available forever, etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Were moving 6000 machines to forefront antivirus, which shares the exact same AV engine as Security essentials.
It has more stuff for enterprise updates and deployments and reporting, but it is soo much faster and lighter than others we have looked at.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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.
Reinterpretation of "buy a mac or use linux" mantra every time someone asks for an Windows related advice in all too familiar car terminology:
Windows user: I have this $non-descript-japanese-model hatchback and.... ...
Pundit: Scrap that shit, get a Mercedes!
WU: Well, it's just this noise...
Pundit: Mercedes! Japanese cars are shit!
WU: I can't afford that - anyway I was saying...
Pundit: Then you have to go for a tank!
WU: A tank? WTF? Is this a car service?
Pundit: Or F22 fighter jet. It will happen sooner or later, sonny boy, you car is a piece of shit, it will fall apart any day. Why delaying the inevitable? Switch to proven quality!
WU: Uh... ok, I'll go with it. How do I drive a tank? How do I even get the fucking tank?
Pundit: It's free! You just have to join the military and pass the training and you're good to go!
WU: Can I drive it to work?
Pundit: Not really but who cares! It's rock solid!
WU:
And so on...
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
Are you sure it was Avast? Because it is Avira that gives popups asking for update.
HTH.
Deleted
Microsoft Security Essentials is all you need for non-enterprise A/V.
It's free, it's unobtrusive and it works very well. What's more, commercial AV vendors, like Symantec, realise what a threat it is to their business model and have published a lot of FUD about you get what you pay for - however all the benchmarks I've seen have it ranking up there with the best of them.
The only reason to go for a commercial AV package is if you need a management and reporting console to manage a large number of computers.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
No, it's not like that at all. It's like sleeping with the same woman every night while taking the chance that someone has come by and stuck her with a needle she wasn't aware of.
The chances of that happening are extremely slim.
So... the sites I use often. When was the last time Ars Technica or Slashdot was compromised with something spreading a virus? How about Penny-Arcade or xkcd?
I haven't said it isn't possible, I've only said I'm willing to risk the extremely small chance that I'll get a virus.