I just bought a new computer (newer Windows OS) but haven’t really had one of my own in a while. I need to decide how to best protect my pretty new friend. I’m hoping there is still decent free antivirus software available out there. Can someone who has some knowledge of what’s currently available and what’s good give me some advice please?
Panda cloud is well regarded, has a free version, just make sure you uncheck the boxes for a browser toolbar and home page change when you install
At one time, I subscribed to PC Magazine (back when it was actually a printed magazine) and relied on its reviews and editors choice selections. I think it’s now a web-only publication. Here are its reviews for 2014 software. A short quote from the reviews, “Three products share the Editor’s Choice honor for best overall antivirus: Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014), Norton AntiVirus (2014), and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (2014). With its impressive sweep of the independent labs, Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014) is another very good choice.”
(BTW, i reported the thread so it can be moved to IMHO. I doubt there is a factual answer.)
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Listing available antivirus programs and citing rankings for them is factual enough, but moving this to IMHO will allow folks to give their opinions as well. Since the OP did ask for advice, off to IMHO it goes.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Windows 8 comes with Windows Defender, which is just an updated name of Microsoft Security Essentials that’s been around since the XP days.
For the vast majority of people and situations, this is good enough, particularly if you do basic other things like keep software updated, adblock, etc.
No doubt some people will come in with cites about how this or that other product score better on some test or whatever, but for average users, I don’t think that you need much more than what comes with it nowadays.
I personally use Avast. It’s free and performs very well, though it has been slipping a bit in the rankings in the last year or so. It still ranks high but Avira ranks higher. I’ve had a few problems with it giving false positives, mostly with DLL files related to older games. It’s also really annoying unless you turn silent gaming mode on.
Avira is free and has been ranked very highly in recent years.
AVG is also free and usually does fairly well, though it hasn’t been ranked quite as high as Avira lately. I stopped using it years ago when it started to get more bloated. I haven’t used it lately though and on a modern fast machine its resource use might not be really noticeable.
MSE has been renamed as Windows Defender and is now included in modern installations of Windows. It used to be a decent antivirus but it has really dropped in the rankings in recent years. I wouldn’t rely on it to protect your system.
ETA: I would also recommend that you install an ad blocker and a script blocker on whatever browser you use.
I tried running JUST Microsoft Security Essentials, and I really don’t recommend it. I just had to re-format my hard drive, reinstall Windows, and the first thing I loaded after that was Norton Internet Security. I had some serious virus issues with Microsoft.
with any antivirus you might look in its options or custom installation. much software especially free or cheap software have gone to bundling or giving add-ons that you may not want.
Avast is popular and well regarded.
Do you do risky stuff on the internet? I don’t mean watching naughty videos or whatever, I mean the really bad stuff - opening e-mail attachments from Eastern Europe, downloading random files from warez sites and clicking them without knowing what they are, using a six year old version of Internet Explorer, never updating to the newest version of Flash, or letting my wife touch your computer for more than 30 seconds? (I kid, dear, I love you.)
If the answer is “yes”, address that behavior. If it’s “no”, then MSE/Windows Defender is probably fine, or pretty much any of the other well-reviewed free products. Keeping all of your other programs updated and secure is more important than the difference between virus programs, IMO.
Yep, I’ll be using ad and script blockers and doing all that other special stuff to keep my new friend happy.
Thanks everyone!
I’ve had AVG for I think 8 or 9 years, and have never had any reason to question its efficacy.
There is a consensus that it is good idea to have only one, and not try to run two different programs at the same time. So if you have Windows Defender already installed and want to go with AVG or something, see if you can figure out how to turn Defenders off.
I also turn off my AVG and run a MalwareBytes scan every year or so. But so far, there has never been an incident found.