Best Anti-virus software?

[bammbamm]

+1 for AVG, been using it 4+ years. I had PCillin for 6 mos until the freebie was up. Not bad... Everyone I know who has McAffee or Symantic discovers the same thing, bloat-ware.

[m0p]

NOD32 is the way to go. It's updated veeeeery frequently, has one of the highest detection rates among consumer AV's and has a very small memory footprint as well as being relatively fast at scanning. [/NOD32 fanboyism]

While AVG is free, it's prone to detecting false positives. Not so long ago, a bunch of different WoW patches were detected as viruses, and shortly before that, a few components of Cygwin were also detected by it as well. I've heard of other false positives being detected too, but those 2 were rather prevalent. Personally I'd stay clear of AVG unless you can't afford a NOD32 license and need something free.

[bammbamm]

How long ago, I haven't had any falses with AVG...
Not familiar with NOD32, I'll look into it, though.
BTW, AVG has updates if not every day, every other day, they are frequently updating and or upgrading.
between judicious use of a firewall, AV program and not being boneheaded enough to open every attachment that comes down the pike from unknown sources, you can live a happy, bug-free net existence. And why pay for something if you don't have to?
If you can legally protect yourself for no money, why not? I would consider AVG more than adequate.

[ScottB]

I've been using McAfee Security Suite since I switched to Comcast, because it's included in their package of "free" services. It's set up for auto updates. It has caught a few trojans, worms, and one virus that I know of. I will agree that it is a RAM-hog. My 2003 Dell PC w/ 256 mb RAM slows to a crawl during active scans and updates. It's just a basic student / web PC, so we've learned to live with the slug.

I'm shopping for two new PCs in a month or 2, so I guess I'll give NOD32, AVG or Avast a try. They'll most likely be running XP Pro instead of Vista.

[m0p]

Originally Posted by bammbamm

How long ago, I haven't had any falses with AVG...

If I remember, the whole WoW false positive thing was 2-3 months ago.

[Rotti]

I'm mostly concerned with resource hogs. As long as AVG doesn't use too many resources and works reasonably well I should be happy with it.

[WillTubarao]

i've been using AVG Free Edition for 2 or 3 years with great sucess.
then a friend of mine gave me the NOD32 Full. and it's awesome.

[IbanezFreak777]

No software will be able to protect you from stupidity !!

[Wild_Child]

I've been using Avast for about a year now, never had any problems and it doesn't seem to slow down my system at all.

[Rotti]

Originally Posted by IbanezFreak777

No software will be able to protect you from stupidity !!

Well actually most virus software will stop a threat even if you stupidly open some random email attachment or something.

[Rotti]

Originally Posted by Wild_Child

I've been using Avast for about a year now, never had any problems and it doesn't seem to slow down my system at all.

Thats cool. I have it installed now and so far so good.

[Mike239]

I had Norton on my computer for the last year and my subscription ran out and it wanted me to pay another $80 to upgrade to the newest one and since i already paid the $80 the first time around i wasn't going to do it again so it un-installed it. Norton is s*** you buy it then a year later you have to buy it again, and the way it slows your computer down is dreadful.

So i got rid of norton and put on my computer a zone alarm firewall, AVG anti virus, and spybot search and destroy (All free), now nothing gets through my computer un-detected.

Anyway +1 on the AVG, good free antivirus software Also Spybot might be a good one to try as well, its also free.

[Lefty Robb]

its all about the AVG + spybot + Adaware = full protection for free..

AVG does not bog your computer down at all. In fact its running with less than 2 meg total mem usage...

[Distantshore]

There is also Spywareguard and SpywareBlaster (both free) that work in the background to help protect you.

[jairic]

+1 (again) for AVG