Well, I knew it was coming, but last night, my desktop bit the dust. Dead. Fortunately, a friend had given me a laptop as back-up; it is really bare-bones and I have spent the day getting it set up.
I need a really good Antivirus/anti-malware service that’s FREE to download. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
I use the free version of Avast! for antivirus, and Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware. Both seem to run fine and I haven’t noticed much in the way of slowing down the system. Avast “phones home” for updates at least once a day, but you need to manually update the other (unless I missed an automatic option, or perhaps that’s a paid feature).
In October, Microsoft released their free antivirus solution:
The jury is still out on its effectiveness in comparison to its peers, but I really like it.
I maintain the network at a small school and I had tried several different “free” antivirus products—they usually were cut-down versions of commercial software, often encumbered with “home use only” licensing.
One key factor for me was the MSE does automatic scheduled updates, but I can also download the file myself and deploy it at my leisure.
I have a cron job that runs at night on a Linux box that brings down the latest virus definition file. Then, when each machine boots in the morning, the file is automatically applied (using wpkg).
I find that avast really slows down the initial loading of Firefox and IE. Otherwise no complaints. I like Spybot Search & Destroy and Malware Bytes. I’m falling out of love with Lavasoft Ad-Aware – slow and seemingly focused only on tracking cookies.
Thanks for the suggestions, I have downloaded Avast, and will dowwnload Malwarebytes, I remember I had that one on my old faithful.
No fun, trying to get this laptop set up the way I want it…
It’s antivirus and antimalware. I am using it and have been happier with it than AVG Free. It does not add any annoying messages to your emails like AVG, doesn’t try to get you to buy a paid version (there isn’t one). I have read two favorable reviews, one in the Washington Post. I still keep Search & Destroy around but don’t run it in background anymore.