The liscence for macafee is due up this week. I've heard Kaspersky (?SP?) is a better alternative. What do others use? Anyone use the Yoggie standa lone Dongle?

Avira is the dogs bollocks.

It's also free

AVG is also free and available for d/load from filehippo.com

I use an Axe

Doesn't find all virus's tbh.

So votes are:

1. Avira
2. AVG (but has a downside)
3. Axe

I've found Avast to be quite useful and it doesn't slow the pc down too much like AVG did. And it's the best price of all, free

Anything beginning with 'A' seems good then!

Well it worked for the A-team
I know, I know

sorry when I said Axe i meant I chop the LAN cable with an axe it costs a fortune

Hook line and sinker ya bugger!

however I'm wireless so the axe would have to got through the laptop!

So votes are:

1. Avira
2. AVG (but has a downside)
3. A fire Axe....
4. Avast

http://www.free-av.com/

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

download and run both of them

Eset Nod32.

I have worked in the IT Industry for 10 years and NOD32 is IMO the best all round virus checker.

First year licence is slightly more expensive but renewal prices are less than £20

I use "Kaspersky internet security 2010" which is on offer at the moment for a 3 user licence the cost is £19.99, I am of the opinion you won't get an awfull lot for free these days, especial when it is such an important task you are aiming for.

And we're back to the old "free versus paid" debate again.
I've used free antivirus programs for years now and not had a single problem, not a single virus has ever infected any of my computers.

I also use this.

By the way McAfee always used to be a pig to uninstall !

By the way McAfee always used to be a pig to uninstall!!

If your going for free ones then I would still recommend AVG if it works on your machine, if not, uninstall and shove in Avira.

A company in the business of selling anti-virus is not intentionally going to risk its reputation with a naff free product.

Download the McAfee un-installer/cleanup program as detailed
HERE

If these anti- virus are free, whats in it for them.

I use Microsoft's Security Essentials as AVG free was slowing down the PC too much. All-in-all it's not a bad product.

(Never had a virus though, so cannot compare on that front.)


Don't know about the others but AVG used to irregularly pop-up adverts for the paid for version.

In the 12 months since you've had mcafee have you had any virus / security issues? Has it done its job? If it has done exactly what it says on the tin then how is any other programme any better??

Stick with what works for you. If the renewal is too expensive then by all means change...but if there is no difference in price....

Generally people offer things for free for a few reasons.

1. Free for personal use, they hope that if enough people use their products for free enterprises will purchase their software for commercial use
2. Donations, on average people will donate upto 70% of the goods value anyway, kind of a sales ploy.
3. Cross selling, companies offer really usefull tools for free hoping you may purchase some of their other products
4. Opensource, Software built by hundreds/thousands of people for free for free use (eg anti microsoft peeps.)
5. Nice people, like doing things for nothing.

Generally, as a business I would not rely on free applications due to complicated licence agreements and aftersales support etc.

i work for the nhs and our computers have Kapersky, seems to be doing the biz

I use McAffee/EPO on about 10,500 computers in work, but it suffers from bloat and does need about 512mb to run properly.

Depends a great deal on the version of Windows you have. Most important thing is to keep Windows & sun java updated as this will help prevent viruses spreading in first place.

I quite like MS security essentials on Win 7 myself.

If your comp does get a virus I found Bart's boot disk to be VERY useful. Viruses are very clever these days and will load as drivers on start up to stop Anti virus progs loading. Bart's boot disk will start your comp to a basic copy of Windows (PE) where you can run a full scan from a downloaded free super DAT (anti virus definition file).


See these tutorials:

https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB67088
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Don't give McAffee your money. They've just bricked hundreds of thousands of PCs with a bad definitions update.

Microsoft Security Essentials is free, no-frills, no-fuss and is very good. I also run Spybot Search and Destroy occasionally.

Trend Micro does a free on-line scan called Housecall which is good to run occasionally.

I went off AVG when it went to version 9. A resource hog and clunky to use. Tried Avast! but couldn't get along with it.

Used Avira for years, safe, quick, doesn't eat into your memory and has kept my PC virus free.
Best site to download from or search for others is http://www.majorgeeks.com
And to keep your PC at optimum performance try Advanced System Care, it has spyware removal, junk files removal, registry repair and a host of other goodies that keeps your pc running at top speed. It is quick and easy to use. Google 'Obit' and the link will come up

Thanks for all the replies peeps. I was surprised by a few of the suggetions!

We're runnig Vista at home. I've gone off Macaffee as the definition download seems to hog the system for the first 30 minutes or so on each power up. Also some of the automated scans....don't . I' have to kick them off manually when the computer says they haven't been done for a while

I've asked this question of two other large forums I use..... I was surprised to see MSE get such a high approval!

It's all subjective I know but the opinion across the sites was:

1. Microsoft Security essentials x 13
2. Avast x10
3. Kaspersky x10
4. AVG x7
5. Eset NOD32 x6
6. Avira x4
7. Bitdefenderx2
8. Macaffeeeee
9. Bullguard
10. norton 360
11. A fire Axe....to chop the wire

I am always cautious when it comes to Microsoft and security, they want to maintain Windows at maximum flexibility and marketability. Some of their policies on security are highly dangerous to end users, specifically some Windows default setting (ports open etc) and even Windows Firewall lets a lot of traffic go through that is open to abuse.

Whilst I realise most of my thoughts are concerning Firewall type security, I would not be surprised if their virus/spyware/adware policies are equally lenient.

Protection is an interesting subject and it all depends about what you are trying to protect against and the risk of attack.

A commercial organisation will seperate its firewalls from the PC and will no doubt have web filtering in between. This is because they will have more things to protect against than the home user and they'll have more users that can do silly things that could compromise them or introduce viruses and/or malware.

If you keep your PC regulary updated with patches, don't visit dodgy sites and turn on a firewall you'll be less at risk. However, if you regulary download exe files off Limeware and visit said sites, you'll probably want more protection such as website/browser checking.

The free AV stuff is great, if you don't want or need the advanced features that come with most commercial programs.

Typically, the more your computer has to "check" the more resources it will use. There are ways to fine tune AV programs to ensure they work best with your PC and what you do on it. One of the common options is to only scan disk write operations than just reads. There are numerous articles on the internet to help you get the best balance between protection and PC performance for whichever product you choose to use.

The free Microsoft stuff, if that be Security Essentials or their own internal firewall aint bad and should suit most users. Those who want more protection can simply use another product or disable it altogether. It is best practise to seperate the firewall from the PC as if the PC does get infected it can't disable the internal firewall to open ports etc., but this is typically OTT for home use.

If you do get infected I would recommend trying the BartPE method in my earlier post as it's completly free to download the McAffee DAT and boot your comp off CD.

I changed from ESS to F-Secure IS 2010 after 8 years of using the former back in December iirc, when v4 of ESS became totally unstable and started handshank my CPU. This happened to all the computers I installed it on and again a few months later, was not prepared to keep running v3 because they could not be bothered to fix the problems in v4, so will not give them another chance on v4.

F-Secure IS 2010 has proven every bit as good as ESS, in fact from my hackers point-of-view (im not ashamed to admit it, its something I need to know how to do to assist protecting my clients data and systems - the best way to avoid being comprimised is being able to understand how do the comprimising imho), the firewall is the best software one I have come across, it makes the computer pretty much undetectable to the outside world if you tell it to, and the package has dealt with every vulnerability myself and fellow hackers have thrown at it, as one would expect.

Anyone who has had the pleasure to use any of my computers will understand that I find lag of any nature, on any spec system, to be unacceptable, and im pleased to say F-Secure has not had any adverse impact on any machine I am running it on (from C2d's to my age-old Pentium 3 server) - it does not interfere and the firewall is extremely intelligent, ive seen only 3 prompts for application permissions.

The only downside is the basic and somewhat outdated interfece, but I always prefer performance over asthetics - hence I still run Winamp 2.22 lol - I want applications that do the job I need them to without any fuss or bloat, something that looks nice but does not do the job is hardly practical.

£20 for a 3-pc license or £10 for a single user license (OEM) isnt breaking the bank, can't really see all these tight-arses and stingebags keep plodding on with free basic products.

Its a shame ESS has gone kaput, it was always known within the IT industry as the benchmark all-rounder, especially with regards performance and un-interuption, there is nothing worse than having an AV rule your life or bloat your computer.

As for McAffee... would not touch that heap of shit with bargepole, its neither secure or the best in any element of protection, and to say it wanks the host system's resources, is an understatement. There are many millicious virus's out there that pose less of a risk and have less of an adverse impact on system performance than McAffee.

I'd be the first to admit that we have more problems with McCrapee than the viruses themselves, GroupShield periodically kills Exchange databases, dodgy dats frequently whipe out half our network and as for HIPS, that is the biggest bag of shit I've ever seen.

Users pissed that their computers run like crap, slow logons; all have their routes with McCrapee.

And as for EPO, whoever wrote that must have been taking PCP. I've never met a product that needs so much attention.

We have got sophos on our it network. It seems really good, nice management console and it works on apple mac. Very good performance