Good Anti Virus downloads?

[twocows]

Is Microsoft Security Essentials free? Or does it cost money?

@My friend downloaded 8 different Virus Protection and his computer runs really fast.

No offense, but your friend has no idea what he's doing if he downloaded eight anti-virus programs. Any more than one is going to hurt your performance and possibly system stability.

I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free. If you have money to spare, ESET NOD32 is also very good.

 

[donavannj]

As for the best paid anti-virus, I would go to Windows Live One Care. Sure, it's expensive, but in my experience it detects almost anything unusual on your pc. Sure, this means it's very sensitive, but thus far it has found most viruses, including though ones that not any other anti-virus could find.

Did you know that Microsoft Security Essentials is based off of the same definitions engine as Windows Live One Care was? It's pretty hard to tell, because One Care is very intrusive to using the computer and MSE isn't. It's the same engine, except the pestering factor is scaled back quite a bit in MSE.

 

[Palantides]

The one thing that I would say Avast performs better than MSE, is that it has self protection. Many anti-virus programs don't have this, but the key system files that are important for Avast to run are actually stored in the quarantine section, meaning that the anti-virus program itself cannot be attacked.

I've seen viruses attack Norton, McAffee, Avira, AVG, etc. This little feature on Avast really makes it stand out that much more for me. It's also got 100% detection on "in the wild" viruses, and has won quite a number of awards for it.

If you want to pay for something, Kaspersky runs quite well. But why would you want to pay for an anti-virus program when you can get great ones that are free? Only thing with Kaspersky is that it's low on system resources, which is a good thing.

If you want less bloat, I'd recommend Panda Cloud Anti-virus. The files are scanned on a remote server rather than on your machine, so you'll find that less system resources are used. But you should use it as a defense tool rather than trying to clean up a system that is infected. So make sure your system is clean before using Panda (I'd recommend if for a Netbook rather than a desktop or office computer).

 

[Dawn]

With Avast, I've had the pleasure of never technically having to remove a virus. Why? Avast knows if it's a virus before you even download it. If a virus of some sorts trys to get downloaded to your computer, Avast will detect it before it even finishes downloading and kill the DL. It will even kill malicious ads and the sort.

You can't remove something that was never there.

I can't really speak for other AVs though. I switched from Norton to Avast when I was a lot younger, and the sheer superiority of Avast just won me for life. (Or at least, beyond the point of bothering to search for something better when it so clearly didn't fail me.)

 

[The Wave]

Did you know that Microsoft Security Essentials is based off of the same definitions engine as Windows Live One Care was? It's pretty hard to tell, because One Care is very intrusive to using the computer and MSE isn't. It's the same engine, except the pestering factor is scaled back quite a bit in MSE.

It is? I didn't know that. O_O

If that's really the case, and since MSE is free, I would say get MSE too.
*goes off installing MSE* XP