Best free anti-virus for Vista?

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
Well, it looks like I'm being dragged, kicking and screaming, from XP to Vista. Oh well.

My new notebook came with McAfee SecurityCenter installed, which I swiftly uninstalled (and cackled while doing so).

So now I need an anti-virus program for Vista and I'm not sure what's best.

I was thinking AVG Free or Avast.

Any suggestions?
 
I currently use Bullguard. There's a 90-day trial, and well, it stopped many things that other firewalls/anti-virus programs didn't. But I use the Gamer version, a lot less junk. ^__^)_b
 
well, I caved and bought Norton Gaming and I LOVE IT. It's not the norton I had nightmares about and I'm glad I gave it a shot. Install was small and quick and uses virtually no cpu. As for free I have always seemed to sway towards avast, but that just cuz I never really noticed it was running, when I turned off all the annoying verbal and pop-up anoucements, but with AVG I did seem to notice when it was scaning and maybe just seeing that extra icon in the tray makes me mad.
 
I have gone with Comodo. Its antivirus and firewall compelte package for free. It may not be the best but its the smallest footprint for sure.

That list has sophos #1 which i know to be rubbish as we have it at work
 
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Honestly the real purpose for Virus clearing software is to protect you if you mess up, because 99% of all infections are our own fault, and if you play it safe and do what you are suppose to you should only need your Virus software 1% of the time if that... In the 10 years I have been messing with computers, in the last 5 I have only been infected a couple times and I know why I was and it was my own fault every time...

EDIT: Now don't think if you use a Mac you are free to do what you want, I have worked for Apple and have talked with developers, and there are many many many viruses out for OS X, and you are just as likely to get a virus on a Mac as you are on a PC, but because most people use PCs it just "seems" like PCs are infected more, and many times on a Mac you do not know you are infected...and your unseen anti-virus program that works like Windows Defender cleans it up for you without you even knowing...
 
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That is simply not true in my reality. I have been doing in-home Tech support for the past 4 years. We see around 3-5 virus cases a week and every one is PC. I do most all the MAC calls for the company and in the past 4 years I have yet to see 1 MAC with a virus. I have seen 100+ PCs with viruses. I am constantly rebuilding PCs because a nasty worm has got to the root kit. These ones that masquerade like a anti-virus program are particularly nasty because they trick a common user into installing it as something that will help them. These are rampant right now on PCs and I have yet to see 1 on a MAC.

So there is simply no way that a MAC user is just as likely to get a virus.

These bad worms usually come in the form of an email that look legitimate. The user clicks on the email link because they think they are going to their eBay account or whatever. Then it installs the popup which at some time later will tell them they have trojans and need to click here to install a program to fix that (which is actually installing the worm) well MAC users get these emails too but when they click on them nothing happens because it just doesn't affect the MAC.
 
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ewoksrule said:
I have yet to see 1 MAC with a virus.
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Exactly...............

Apple hides it well, they use a hidden anti-virus that takes care of it without you even knowing... Now can I prove this, no, this is just what I was told from Apple developers, the ones that write for OS X...

In my 8-10 calls a day I took, at least one of them a day was a virus problem, but I was not allowed to tell them it was a virus...
 
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XionTawa said:
I would like your source, mainly because every day I go through lots of tech news and blogs and what not...and I have NEVER heard of AVG missing anything...
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I got smacked by that recent PDF exploit while using AVG. AVG couldn't even FIND the trojan I knew I had.
 
I don't think I've run across any Macs with a virus, but I've definitely hit a few with spyware. See all kinds at a college I guess.
 
Elader Arkon said:
I don't think I've run across any Macs with a virus, but I've definitely hit a few with spyware. See all kinds at a college I guess.
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Like I said, the program runs and gets rid of it and you never know...most people that have/had a virus on their Mac never knew... You have probably came across many Mac with viruses or have had viruses...
 
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Kidan said:
I got smacked by that recent PDF exploit while using AVG. AVG couldn't even FIND the trojan I knew I had.
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What would you recommend then?

AVG tends to lag my system when I click to launch the Start Menu, which is very annoying, so I want to try something else.
 
XionTawa said:
EDIT: Now don't think if you use a Mac you are free to do what you want, I have worked for Apple and have talked with developers, and there are many many many viruses out for OS X, and you are just as likely to get a virus on a Mac as you are on a PC, but because most people use PCs it just "seems" like PCs are infected more, and many times on a Mac you do not know you are infected...and your unseen anti-virus program that works like Windows Defender cleans it up for you without you even knowing...
Click to expand...

There's not as many virii out there as is thought for Unix(this includes mac) and anything that does exist can only contaminate the users area and NOT the whole system. Superior design begets superior security.
 
I have used Free AVG since they first came our, this year I switched to Avast. One of my PCs got a virus and AVG did not catch it or could find it. I installed Avast, it found it immediately and fixed the problem. Thus I changed all my PCs, and software packages to Avast, not to mention the fact that it updates automatically and is not a bloated as AVG and does not take up as much system resources as AVG.

Maximun PC has a great article on comparing the latest A/V for 2009.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/protect_your_pc_from_guys_like_this

table2.jpg
 
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So far, it seems more people are in favor of Avast, as far as free options go.

I don't have the money to spend on a retail anti-virus package right now, so free is my only option.

On a side note, I was shocked to see that Symantec has the lowest memory usage of the products review.
 
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