Right, so I've got a Windows 8.1 tablet coming next week and I want to stick an anti-virus on there. I've been out of the Windows game for a while, so what are people's go-to anti-virus these days? Requirements: must be free 'cos I'm a skinflint; must include on-demand and on-access scanners; must use the bare minimum system resources, 'cos the tablet only has 1GB of RAM. Well, to be fair, CPU-heavy wouldn't be too much of a problem as it's a quad-core processor, but RAM-heavy is a definite no-go. Yes, there's Microsoft Security Essentials - but having seen how that performs in independent testing, I'd prefer something else. I use to use Avast!, which was pretty good, but the new version seems a bit bloaty and installs a sneaky little advertising extension into Internet Explorer and Firefox which has put me right off.
Windows? At the Halfacrees's?? What is the world coming to Anyway, I roll with AVG and Avast and they don't bother any of my systems that I notice anyway. If I could be bothered I would get rid of avast and go all AVG. I'm pretty sure both of them have sneaky style bloatware associated with them. So you do have to watch the installers. But this is true of a lot of freeware on windows. I tend to avoid web protection so the browser extensions don't get installed. just checking now I do seem to have web protection enabled on AVG but no addon. I'm not sure how that happened. The best bet is to install everything that's free and modify the install afterwards if you find something you don't like (through add remove programs) Your best bet is probably to look at the benchmarks. Start at the top and work your way backwards until you find one that suits. Everyone's experience with anti-virus is going to be both subjective and different.
Crazy, innit - but £60 for a quad-core Atom, 32GB of storage, 1280x800 8" IPS screen, 1GB of RAM and a full Windows 8.1 licence couldn't be refused. I won't be using it day-to-day - it's a go-to system for niggly little jobs that are a pain under Linux, like updating the firmware on my Sony camera thing.
Yikes, an Atom + 1GB ram. If thats the case maybe the best anti-virus is the system reset functionality
I'm more worried about the RAM - the Atom is a 1.3GHz Baytrail quad-core - pretty grunty, really, considering the power draw! As an aside: AV-Test seems to suggest Avira is pretty good for detection and performance, so I'll give that a go and see how it does.
Kaspersky Internet Security free for Barclays account holders. Task manager reports 1.7MB memory usage.
My Q6600 struggled with KIS so I'd defo avoid that with an atom. I'd just untick pretty much anything you don't absoulutely need though. 1gb RAM won't go far as soon as you add crapware in.
I'd be interested to know what AV package you go for, Gareth. My tablet arrives next week too, and I was wondering if Microsoft's own offering was up to the task.
On that hardware I'd still be tempted to use MSE (Windows Defender on 8.1) for resident protection irrespective of it's relatively poor performance, especially if you are an experienced /careful user with an up to date browser and the system is for fairly light/secondary use. No harm in trying various options though. I currently use Avira on one system and other than a bit of notification bar-nagging (fair enough since it's free) it seems fine.
This is an option I would consider if any other program proves too much on resources. Supplement it with a regular manual scan of something like malwarebytes you can set off when the tablet is not in use.
I hear rumors santa is delivering something similar, though with a Celeron N2940 and 2 Gigs of ram. I'd have preferred 4 but hey. That said, the wife is getting a Win8.1 phone, so let's see how the two play with eachother. I'll be trying MSE, keep it all in one hand.
The tablet arrived (and is entirely lovely, if you were wondering). Put Avira on there, and Task Manager reckons it's chewing up about 45MB of memory all-in during on-access scanning. I reckon I can live with that. Also: since when did Windows get lovely little "if things are br0k, press this button to refresh your install without losing your files and settings; if things are still br0k, press this other button to completely wipe the piggin' thing and start afresh; if you want to do something else, hit this last button to boot from other devices or fiddle around with the BIOS" options? I like.
Noticed that on my Sisters new Win8 laptop that I was setting up the other day. Was going to do a full system image backup, but it looks like Windows has got it all covered already. How well will it work though? Suppose it's got more important as more devices are dropping the optical drive, and installation media being provided with fewer and fewer computers.
Tell a lie: rebooted after installing all the 69 updates Windows 8.1 required, and Avira stopped working: just loaded a blank, empty window. Might just stick with Windows Defender for now!
Yup, although - in typical Windows fashion - another five or six appeared on reboot. Must be a fairly up-to-date factory image - although, I note, the "Windows 8.1 with Bing" (which OEMs don't pay a licence fee for, hence the low cost of the tablet) is 32-bit on a 64-bit processor. Bit annoying, that - but, again, tempered by the fact it was £60. £60! I actually installed a different AV last night: Bitdefender Free. More RAM usage - around the 60MB mark - but actually seems to work. Well, when its little pop-up window isn't popping up for no readily apparent reason. Windows 8.1's Desktop mode seems a bit buggy on tablets, although it may just be small-screen tablets: rotating from portrait to landscape or vice-versa can hide windows, and installation dialogues are often forced into full-screen - which looks ridiculous.
Yeah there's always more updates. It's a big nuisance on new images or when updates haven't been installed in a while. Try opening the videos of awesome thread on it. See what happens. Edit: With posts per page set to 100
Hum, mine arrived too, a two GB Ram, Celeron N2940 based one. Did come with a 64bit Win8.1 though. McAfee was preinstalled, and wiggles it's way into everything. However, only a 30 day trial (so bloatware). Kicked it off and there's a Windows Defender underneath. Appearently WSE is only for older systems?
