Are You Paying for Anti-virus?

I want to start this one off by talking a little bit about myself so you can get a feel for the kind of person I am.  I've been working in the mental health field almost twenty years now.  That's my main job, but I moonlight in computer repair, mobile device repair, jailbreaking iOS devices, rooting Android devices, and basically anything that has to do with technology.  I'm a bonifide techie.  I'm currently working on my B.A. in Information Technology, and I love reading and reviewing new gadgets.  Since I repair computers all week long part-time, I decided to talk about anti-virus protection this time. 

Everyone thinks in order to get good protection you have to purchase anti-virus.  Well I just want to talk about some really good free ones that are just as good as the paid packages.  You may not have all the bells and whistles but you can still get the same protection.  All security software is focused on the same thing, and that's keeping your computer safe.  There are many security suites you can go with but I'll tell you which ones I think work better for me.

AVG ANTI-VIRUS FREE 2012: 100% of threats stopped - AVG hands down is one of the best free ones you can get.  Trust me on this one.  I've used just about 15 to 20 different ones and this is by far the best one.  It has great malware detection and web detection.  The only real problem with this one is its kind of a memory hog.  It added 259 MB to the memory footprint of the test system I had been using.  If you have an older computer running 1 to 2 GB of ram this will be a problem for you.  AVG has a LinkScanner that warns you of dangerous search results that works really good.  I  really don't like all the advertising all over the place.  Seems a littled cluttered to me.

AVAST FREE ANTIVIRUS 6: 94% of threats stopped - Avast has a clean and friendly interface.  Like AVG it has adverts for the company's commercial products, but these are more tastefully presented, making it less annoying package overall.  Now this one is not as good as AVG, but what I like the most about it is that it has a super-light memory footprint of only 52 MB, and a super quick virus scan which completed in a quick 14 seconds.  It has a WebRep toolbar and browser plug-in that shows trustworthiness of search results and visited sites.  An AutoSandbox mode automatically runs untrusted downloads in a protected mode, limiting their ability to do mischief.

COMODO INTERNET SECURITY PREMIUM: 98% of threats stopped - I know a pretty good amount of people who use Comodo and they love it.  It comes with a firewall that's easy to monitor and configure.  I usually have a problem with false-positive detection.  If you don't know what that is, it's when its a good program and it gets flagged by the virus detection as either it doesn't know if its bad or it just labels it as a bad program.  It's protection is better than many paid-for packages.  The default suggestion when a virus is detected is to call in Comodo's paid-for Geek Buddy service, rather than blocking the item.

MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS: 92% of threats stopped - Security Essentials is the simplest anti-virus option.  This is also the one I use the most.  You can install it directly from Windows Update, then leave it completely in the background to do its thing.  There's no specialty or extras in this one, just straight to the point.  The memory footprint is a little heavy for such a light-weight package.  Its weighing in at 196 MB.  The interface is easy to navigate, but it still comes behind other free packages when it comes to stopping threats.  The main reason I use this one is because I've been using it for a long time.

McAFEE INTERNET SECURITY 2012: 52% threats stopped - This use to be a really good anti-virus, and  its not one of the free ones.  I just wanted to warn people out here using this one.  McAfee Internet Security has a small 101 MB footprint, it includes a firewall, email scanner, anti-spam agent, online back up module with 1 GB of storage, home network scanner, and file shredder.  Sadly, its still a piece of crap!  This is a really big gamble if you use this package.  I clean at lease 7 computers a month that have McAfee on them.  Just think you actually pay for this. 

There are other really good anti-viruses out there to choose from.  Too many to even name right now.  What's some of the anti-viruses you all use?  Let me know what really works for you.  "Now that's real spit done done done......" Gangstalicious