To be honest, although its a little boring, I've been using AVG Free for years and it has never let me down. I have never had a virus thanks to AVG. Recently However I've installed MalwareBytes as I've found it picks out potentially dangerous files in places AVG is incapable of looking such as the memory etc. I would reccomend the combination of AVG and malwarebytes for general virus protection.
AVG got very resource intensive and would scan right when i needed my pc to be quick-every time! went to AVAST and don't notice it except for the message about it being updated. Didn't even know about MSE, might try it out at some point.
Microsoft Security Essentials gets my vote also, when I'm working on a student's computer at work, or a customer's computer in my free time, unless they specify otherwise, I load MSE. I use it on my work computer, and now on my laptop at home. This is the first time I used anti-virus protection on my home computer. I really like it and it works extremely well. Catching issues that other anti-virus programs missed.
Just for everyone to be clear to avoid potential license trouble: MSE installed at work is free for up 10 licenses and for small businesses. If it doesn't fit the above criteria on your work environment, you need Microsoft ForeFront (same thing, same interface but paying, with server connectivity for the server version of ForeFront to generate reports execute network scans and all that enterprise related features. I don't think you need the Server version to use ForeFront).
Thanks for the heads up GoodBytes, I'll look into Forefront. If it looks like it will work out for our campus, I'll forward information about it to our IT coordinator. We're looking for a replacement to our McAfee software. It simply doesn't catch enough, high CPU usage, and update issues with our update server.
I have seen so many AV threads... I like my background software to be running actually in the background eg. not resource intensive. I used to use AVG but switched to MSE after a different AV thread due to, as GoodBytes said, opinion on this forum. AVG is a resource hog, constantly whirring the hard disk. MSE is a true background program. Oh, and Malwarebytes to catch the nasties.
An update, with our MSDN agreement, we actually get Forefront Endpoint without any additional cost. Going to install that now, I'm guessing it's going to work just fine.
I know the topic is free AV, but I have used Norton since 2008 (when it became good) and you can get an OEM disk from Amazon for about £12, which is less than a round of drinks for a years protection. I am sure most of us would blow far more than that taking a chance on a game, which then turns out to be rubbish and gets played for about 3 hours. I may try out the Microsoft programme though, when my sub ends.
My vote also has to go to AVG Free, then Microsoft Security Essentials. One good thing about MSE is that it won't nag you quite the way AVG does nowadays.
Ive recently started running AVG. Seems okay so far compared to Mcafee which was bundled with my laptop. I must admit I haven't noticed it being particuarly resource hungry.
