What is the best FREE antivirus (like norton) and is it good?

Question

Are there any free, good, antivirus programs on the web for downloading? I'm not paying $40 for less than a year, anyway thanks

Answer 1

avg

Answer 2

avg is the best, norton stopped my laptop working properly

Answer 3

avira

http://www.free-av.com

Answer 4

Of the 3 "main" "free" antivirus programs, AVG has the lowest detection rates (detects and cleans fewer viruses.)

Avira from http://www.free-av.com is probably the best of the free ones.

Avast! is also pretty good, howeve AVG is the most popular, mainly because it was around longer than the other free products and got a lot of "air time" on shows like Kim Komando etc. years ago.

Norton is bottom-of-the-barrel when to comes to performance & stability, even if it were free, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

If you want the best, get ESET NOD32 from http://www.eset.com, but it will cost you around $40 for the first year and $25 or so for each year renewal after.

Answer 5

ESET NOD32, you can get it from http://www.nod32.com.sg/html/44/42/

ESET NOD32 is your best defense against viruses, trojans and other forms of malware-and the top choice for IT professionals. Powered by the ThreatSense® engine with advanced heuristics, which blocks far more unknown threats than the competition.

ESET NOD32 Antivirus provides:

Proactive Protection: The award winning ThreatSense technology combines multiple layers of detection protecting you from Internet threats before it is too late.

Precise Detection: ESET accurately identifies known and unknown threats. It consistently wins top awards from testing labs and is recognized for having zero false positives.1

Lightweight Design: Requires less memory and CPU power, allowing your computer to run fast, making more room for games, web browsing, and emailing.

Fast Scanning Speeds: Highly efficient program ensuring fast file scanning and product updates. It runs quietly in the background.  

Answer 6

Norton is expensive and rubbish.

AVG has a free version that is better than Norton.  

Answer 7

Well...you certainly have opened a can of worms on this one!! Pay no attention to opinions, even mine, here's a fact:

FACT:

No one program detects and removes everything. Impossible. Every program updates their virus databases differnetly. You'll need a few programs.

FACT:

Programs like Nortons...McAfee...Kasperskey...Nod32...... are resource hogs. The all in one Firewall, Anti-Virus, Spyware and Spam suites take up oodles of memory and slow things down sometimes. Best to have seperate Firewall, Virus and Spyware programs.

FACT:

Yeah programs cost $$$$ every year because.........THEY WORK!!!

Best advice I can give is this:

BUY ONE Anti-Virus program only. Just an Anti-Virus program. For what it's worth, Kasperskey and Nod32 are usually the top ranked ones. Yeah it costs $$$$ to keep a yearly subscription but just having the anti-virus programs alone isn't that much.

Ok then. Download a few FREE programs and use them as well. They're to be used in ADDITION TO, NOT INSTEAD OF whatever one you end up with. And get familiar with safe mode with networking because it's a good place to run a scan. PLUS there are a few places to go online and get a FREE online virus/spyware scan.

E-mail me and I can send a whole lot more info on FREE programs and stuff, I can't fit it all here!! But it's a good start.

Answer 8

AVG!   Norton is rubbish

Answer 9

AVG is a great one, search either free AVG or maybe it's Grisoft.com i'm very pleased with it.

Answer 10

AVG is the best free one around. It is recommended by most reputed websites like download.com etc. Give it a try, I use it and works pretty well for me

Answer 11

Grisoft AVG free 8.0

Combine this with Lavasoft Adware 2008 and you have a very effective and potent anti spyware and anti virus team.

Answer 12

You can use AVG, Avira or Avast