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Ask Slashdot: Actual Best-in-Show For Free Anti Virus?

Posted by samzenpus on from the good-and-cheap dept.

First time accepted submitter paperclipman writes "I'm on the college student budget and want to make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while. I like to think of myself as a reasonably competent CPU user so I'm no adventurous link-clicker, but I do download some music as a recent SoundCloud devotee. My Kaspersky antivirus will be expiring shortly and I don't particularly care to renew with that steep of a fee — any advice from fellow thrifts?"

2 of 515 comments (clear)

  1. Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'm not even joking. Gets practically no viruses, costs nothing, ever.

  2. Ubuntu? by gQuigs · · Score: 0, Troll

    If you actually care about your security you've almost got to go with a Linux distro, use NoScript and no plugins at all. Initially, in most cases, security is a tradeoff with convenience. Anti-virus is a never ending game because it is trying to keep the convenience part (well minus the performance losses), while usually not changing user behavior at all (there are exceptions like SiteAdvisor but I've found they are worse than the viruses they are preventing).

    But seriously, random slashdot poster, what's keeping you from Tux?