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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?"
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...
I used Avast 4.8 for about a month. Then they upgraded to 5.0. Didn't care about the registration, but everything else just irked me to no end. On the other hand, MSE has every advantage you listed, plus no registration, and the updates are gathered through Windows Update, so you don't have yet another service updating itself.
Oh, and the quick scan takes about 3 minutes.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Excellent [buy v1agra] product. I haven't have any malware [|\|iger1an 419] detected since I installed it [install Antivirus 2009 today!].
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]
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.
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
::dramatic chipmunk::
Living With a Nerd
Interesting, but Panda Software is linked to Scientology.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to let them send packets from your computer...
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?
I don't think he was talking about the database size, but the fact that both AVG and Avast (I use both) have moved to highly customized skinned UIs and have completely removed any native UI components and include useless junk that slows your system (eg safesearch/linkscanner) in their installers that makes "Custom install" the only practical method
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
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'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.
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?
Because hearing "VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED" is a moodkiller during sex.
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]
I think it was a CNET comparison I read of 19 products. Microsoft Security Essentials was something like 2nd out of 19 products in detection, it was the only free product at the top, and it has the smallest footprint out of all 19 tested.
You'd be hard pressed to argue there is a better free product right now.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I was helping a doctor clean out his family computer when he asked how does one contract a computer virus.
I respond by visiting the seedier parts of the internet looking for cheap thrills and free software/porn.
In a flash of understanding he responds, 'Oh, just like real diseases.'
I then proceded to show him where to obtain free porn without needing to visit the sites that were infecting his computer.
Where might I find one of these wives with the ability to natively run x86 code?
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.