used AVG and spybot side by side for years. AVG has made some fairly recent changes that make it more difficult to control (you can no longer just turn it off like you could before). after a recent, very aggravating night of trying to install a program that AVG kept blocking, i was forced to uninstall AVG in order to install my program. i installed MSE and will be switching all my machines over shortly. i HATE when an antivirus starts to act more like the virus' they are meant to protect me from for firewalls i am behind my routers hardware firewall and i always run windows' built in firewall.
I like Avast but the only time I've ever had a virus in about 20 years of PC's was at work when some to**er thought it would be funny to run a known to be infected file on the machine we shared. Great to lose a days work because of somebodies prank. Some good came from it - my manager got me a nice new super-duper machine for myself and the other person got the equivalent of a toaster M.
I didn't for a long time, but managed to pick up something nasty from a 'specialist' website Formatted, reinstalled, now use Malwarebytes and MSE, occasionally run tdss killer.
Not necessarily true. Depends on what kind of scan was performed, and what kind of malicious software may or may not be on your PC. Programmed correctly AV is highly unlikely to pick up your software once it's installed - assuming the AV even knows of your malicious software to begin with. The best chance of detection is before installation. Afterwards, it becomes a great deal trickier.
Of course. Every computer must have antivirus software even if the computer doesn't connect to the internet. TBH you are a fool if you dont run antivirus software no matter if its free or not.
I find that between my router with firewall, windows 7 firewall / defender, and firefox 4 w/adblock+ its good enough. other than that i boot off a live linux usb and do a scan from that if i have a concern.
MSE on my laptop + windows firewall - no problems. ClamAV on gateway which runs IPTables firewall. wife used MSE but SOMEHOW (!!!) managed to get a "virus" from a cooking site. no idea how she worked it out but has since switched to NOD32. Windows firewall on her laptop. I blame it on her running chrome
Norton AV (basic) Used to be terrible which is why most people do not touch it with a barge pole, but its actually been very good since 2008 when it became much more lightweight. Picked it up on Amazon OEM for about £7.
Used to run AVG free, switched to avast for a while, put it on my sisters laptop. Tried BullGuard since I got it free, and am using avira free now. Never really had any problems with any, including a 6 month stint of having nothing at all. But might aswell be safe than sorry.
I don't use an antivirus on my pc at all these days. The hassle of running them feels like a virus in itself. That's not to say I totally neglect the security of my pc. I have spybot s&d running, and I also have malwarebytes anti-malware, sophos anti-rootkit and rootkit revealer on my pc. Apart from spybot s&d I don't really use them unless I feel my pc isn't running like it should.
Avast on my Win7/Vista machine + windows Firewall. No AV on Laptop running Fedora , the included firewall is switched on.
Anyone else thinking of trying this, PC Advisor have covermounted it with six months of updates with the current issue. The PC Pro trial is Bullguard AV, same six months of updates. Anyone know of a freebie that doesn't clash with Windows Defender? That'll be the next one to try, sadly MSE caused too much instability to 32-Bit Vista on a single-core machine.
Its a tricky point that. As sites that contain ads are paid for by the ads. I've seen a few sites, Runescape, being one of them, that asks you to disable ad blocking software. (Just noticed I've also got ABP disabled on bit-tech). But, as viruses can spread through these, there's a reasonable defence to keeping them running. If the ads system was made more secure, or the way it is implemented was changed, you could possibly remove the need for the blockers. (although most of the reason I block them is because they are simply annoying). I run Avast free and Win 7 firewall. With the power and resources that modern computers have available, the amount used by an AV system is more than small enough to mean that one should always be installed IMO.
