For free AV, I use Avast (with the default skin disabled). For free anti-spyware, I use Windows Defender (part of Vista) and Malware Bytes.
BTW the default skin for Avast sucks - why should AV software look like a media player? Dumb.
I switched to Avira after using Avast for a few years, and AVG before that. Trust me, Avira is by far the best of the three.
Avast / Spybot / Ad-Aware for me. Has worked well for a couple of years, no intrusions.
The only thing that annoys me with Avira is its pointless pop-up with every daily update.
Just because it hasn’t been mentioned, I’ve been more than happy with Comodo for both firewall and anti-virus. You can install either separately, if you don’t really need the firewall. Note that I don’t use the Defense+ feature (I just run Malaware scans on occassion).
A-Squared Free (it’s awesome, trust me, it found way more shit than any scanner I’ve ever had – make sure you do a deep scan!) and Avira with just the barebones scanner for any virii A-Squared may miss, don’t use the extra memory-resident crap.
Microsoft’s Security Essentials has finally left beta. It seems pretty good:
If anyone sees reviews of the MS application out in ‘the wild’ so to speak, please post them. I’d like to see how it works on an infected computer, for example, and how much overhead it takes while playing a game.
I’ve been taking it for a test spin today, and footprint on memory is quite small. We’ll have to see how effective it is on an infected machine.
Just installed the Windows Security program. It replaces Defender, I think, which is good.
I used to use kaspersky, but switched to avira free on my new windows 7 build. Seems to work fine.
All the journalists who have seen MSE have been raving about how good it is. I’ll be very happy to use a single, free, reliable, small, polished, and cleanly integrated anti-virus program instead of those more or less awkward crippleware offerings by third parties.
Here is an article taking a first look at the av portion of Essentials. It seems to work very well.
Does anyone think there should be a new thread just on this? I’m over my thread starting quota for the week:)
I’ve seen COMODO anti-virus/firewall mentioned around the net.
Don’t know much about it, but I heard it’s free.
I use McAfee and I’m getting pretty annoyed with it.
Avira, Avira, Avira. And Malwarebytes. Been deploying the former for years, it’s seriously the best thing at that price point.
Seriously folks, it’s not getting any freer.
If the new Microsoft thing is 95% as good, but doesn’t have the annoying popups, I’m switching.
$2 a month and those popups are gone. How much is your annoyance worth?
Since MSE is completely free without popups… why does it have to be worth anything?
Because I don’t believe for a second that a new product from Microsoft is going to come anywhere near the detection level of Avira, which has in been in the top 3 of the AV Comparatives test for the last few years.