I often get asked which is the best one to use, and to answer this you need to think about several things:
- Price
- Effectiveness (does it perform?)
- Resource Requirements (how slow will your PC run after you install the antivirus software?)
- Ease of use (how confusing is it to setup and operate?)
After many trials and tribulations, much experimentation, and plenty of frustration, I can safely say that Avast Antivirus comes out on top repeatedly.
First off, Avast (Home Edition) will set you back a total of ZAR0. Zip. Free to download at http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download.
Secondly, I have found Avast to be the most effective in removing infections. "Ah but if it's so good then why did the infection get through in the first place?" I hear you ask...
Well surprisingly, viruses can get past most antivirus software if given half a chance. Let's say you skip your updates for a day, a week... maybe a month. That's a window of opportunity right there, to mention only one possible scenario.
Most of the problems I have dealt with in the past are post-infection, i.e. I am called in once the PC has already been infected, despite Nortons, BitDefender, etc. etc. running in the background.
That's where Avast shines - thanks to its boot time scan you can run a virus scan before Windows even starts, and therefore before the virus gets a chance to load into memory.
Thirdly, Avast does not significantly impact the performance of the machine that it is running on.
I am not going to go into the notorious resource-hogging habits of some of the other reputable and well-known antivirus packages, but it is fair to say that a lot of antivirus software kills machine performance.
Fourthly, Avast is setup to go out of the box (not that it comes in a box... you download it :)) - just install it and you are good to go.
The default configuration is perfect for most PC's, and it will give you decent protection from the get-go.
Avast has just released Version 5 of their antivirus software, with revamped graphics, new features and other updates to the software.
Get it here now.
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Thx for the comment - however I am not a speaker of the Chinese language.
ReplyDeleteI did go over to Google Translate however, and according to them, the above comment translates to:
"Hill backing down, by all the old, relying on his best"
Fantastic and thank you for the comment... not that I completely understand what it means :)