I have Norton which is about to expire and I have not been real satisfied for the last two years. I have used Mcafee before also. I have heard the Avast is great and free. Just wondering how well it is from real world user experience.

Or any other brands? I don't mind paying either but I just noticed the Avast is free.

 

Avast is pretty good especially for a free product, my favorite however is bit-defender. I like it much better than Norton or Macafee, they were real system hogs.

 

Do you have a link Lary? Does this also protect incoming and out going emails?

 

I prefer AVG. Antivirus
There is a free version and a pay version. I've used the free for at least 8 yrs and have yet (since using (AVG)to have any sort of virus issues other than a warning that I picked up a virus from a site (at the same time that I clicked on the site) followed by a request to let AVG get rid of it!!!
You have to read carefully while clicking through their site cause they're always trying to get you to go for the "Trail" version which will expire after 30 days or so. They want you to buy but their free one is perfectly fine for daily usage.
This is not a shot at you but for the record.....NORTON SUX!!!!
There is a good chance that you have a virus now if you've been running Norton for any length of time. Everyone I know who's had it has had major virus issues, that I had to fix for them!!!
A couple of them we had to completely reformat the hard drive because the viruses wouldn't let me load AVG.
Make sure you completely uninstall Norton (or any other) before installing any new antivirus.
They never play well together.

 

http://www.bitdefender.com/

No matter what you end up with be sure when you install choose "custom install" so you can avoid the extra stuff like Yahoo Tool bar or the Bit defender tool that they will also install if you do it automatically.

I don't run all those goofy tool bars and crud all they do is soak up resources, I like my PC to be blazing fast

 

Another vote for AVG Free. Been using it for a couple of years now and my computer works much better with Norton gone.

 

I am been very satisfied with VIPRE supplied by Sunbelt...
http://www.vipreantivirus.com/

Uses very little resources when running, you can actually keep working...

 

I like Norton Corporate for my home system and Kaspersky for my kids.

http://www.kaspersky.com/

Kaspersky is really nice and will stop thumb drive viruses from infecting your system. Its a bit more robust but nowhere near the resource hog as Norton 360 can be.



Kris

 

I used McAfee for years. Switch to the pay version of AVG and liked it even better.

I finally wised up and switched to the best virus protection available....


I bought a Mac.

 

Since a Mac is out of the question right now, I will look into the others mentioned. Thanks for the replies so far. And yes, the Norton is a big resource hog!!

 

"I bought a Mac. "



Don't fool yourself. We have thousands of them and they DO get viruses. They really like to share them too.

 

Well I've had it six months and it hasn't had the first hiccup yet. Heck of a lot better than any Windows based PC I've ever owned and with no 3rd party virus protection needed.

Not saying they are perfect but run Windows without any virus protection and see how that works out for you.

 

I have been using avast for 5 yrs now.Have never had a virus or any other bug get through.

 

If your machine is already infected, asquared or clamwin are good standalone antivirus removal programs. Use them with Bart or PE boot cd's to remove virus's that do not want to be removed.

Once things are cleaned up, I have good luck with spybot to watch the registry, use malwarebytes for weekly maintenance and I use Sophos for real time protection. Its not free, but its a good cross platform product.

One more thing, keep your microsoft updates turned on. 100% of the machines we see here that have issues, do not have the updates done. If your updates are done, your risk exposure is very much minimized.

 

They will quite hapilly forward viruses emailed to them by infected windows users, however. Just like my Ubuntu linux box. That is why they write antivirus programs for Mac & Linux boxes.

BTW: there are just a few viruses for mac (maybe a dozen) that I know of and none for linux. All require permission from the user to run. At least to do any serious damage.