Oct
Anti-virus softwares can provide a good layer of protection from malwares, trojans/worms, rootkits and viruses. Most scanner based anti-virus cannot keep up with the multitude of these “pests” because they come in great numbers daily. Daily updates is crucial for the detection of newly created viruses. Several commecial anti-virus scanners are brought down to their knees by these viruses rendering them ineffective, and even if they are updated, the program simply cannot identify the infecting agent since it has already been disarmed. So we resort to using two anti-virus programs at the same time but conflicts may arise, so choosing the best anti-virus program to use is a must.
(Screenshot of Avira Updating with the Advert on the background)
The best FREE anti-virus program is Anti-Vir Personal Edition. It is very light on resources and the detection rate is very outstanding, but lacking in some features. Free Edition does not include malware protection and an email scanner. But upon opening the email, Anti-Vir comes into action when it is infected. It is also very intrusive since for every update there’s an advertisement.
Below are Anti-Virus products but not quite as effective as Anti-Vir but they are more complete products:
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition includes spyware, phishing, and email scam protection. Although it has grown considerably in size and is very heavy on resources, its detection rate is very good. By default, it installs the AVG Security Toolbar with Yahoo search. Regular automatic updates come quickly as before and, despite rumors, the new email scanning feature is not trial limited to 30 days. The free version has no anti-rootkit, provides Linkscanner Lite instead of Pro and has no technical support.
Another equally effective product is the Avast 4 Home Edition, although it sports a funky media player like interface, Avast is the least restricted product out of the three, with anti-rootkit and anti-spyware capabilities. It also has full real-time capabilities, including a web scanner, an e-mail scanner and IM and P2P protection. Avast also requires periodic re-registration, whereas AVG Free does not.
Tags: Anti-Vir Personal Edition, Anti-Virus, Avast 4 Home, AVG Free Edition, Free Anti-Virus, Free Anti-Virus Protection
