Free anti-virus alternatives.

[freeflow^]

So my suscription to Norton is ending in a couple days, and it has come to my attention that it will cost me around 60 dollars to renew for an additional (ya, only one) year. That seems like a lot of money to pay, especially when I used AVG free edition for previous computers and never had a serious problem. Norton was given to me for free.

The only difference now is that I payed for this laptop and I have lots of school and personal info on it and I don't want it to get corrupted. So my question is, do you need an anti-virus program like Norton or McAfee nowadays, or are there good alternatives for free?

[Indigo]

I use Norton and I think it's worth the money, it's saved my ass quite a few times.

[Luisfe]

I prefer Avast to Norton's.
Less invasive, more effective in some areas. Pretty damn good.

Free, too.

[Elon]

Is Avast better than AVG?

kaspersky, antivir, and nod32 from eset are some of the best. i think they're just around $30 or $40 a year.


everyone i've talked to says norton is junk.

[Indigo]

Originally Posted by generalelectric

everyone i've talked to says norton is junk.

Yeah people say the same thing about macs. But you wouldn't need anti virus if you had one. People like to shun a lot of things that they just don't want to pay money for.

[Hewitt]

Honestly, an anti-virus is the last line of defense. You are completely fine with a free anti-virus as long as you are using a secure browser, installing Windows updates, and using common sense to surf the web sensibly and safely. I currently use AVG but I would suggest that or Microsoft Security Essentials. Also if you are worried about not losing your important data then I highly suggest having a backup plan such as having two local copies on different drives and having an off site backup. The drive in my main PC crashed last week so I can't stress that second part enough.

[freeflow^]

Originally Posted by Blue

Microsoft's new Security Essentials is all you need.

Its lightweight and not full of bloat like Norton's or Mcafee and it's free. Norton and mcafee really slow down your system and get their hooks deep into the registry, making them hard to uninstall. Anytime I've worked on a computer that someone asked me to look at for being slow, they had one of those suites and when I took them off, the computer was exponentially faster.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Nod32 is the best pay for AV out there if you want to pay for one, that is.

Great thanks a lot!

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

If you have Windows 7 then Microsoft Security Essentials is probably your best bet, as recommended.

[Luisfe]

I am still rocking Avast and MSE. They work well together.

[Devil King]

I use Avast and Malware. My computer is perfectly fine.

[Seifer]

Surprised no one mentioned Linux yet.

Don't think it'll be an easy switch over from Windows though. At least for me it wasn't!