How good are free anti-virus programs?

[Alchemist Voicu]

As the title says.
If they as good or better than paid anti virus programs than which is a good one to replace my Norton anti virus?

AV

[dogmeat]

Personally, I`m a fan of AVG Anti-virus.  Theres a free edition out there and its a nice and easy program.

[atacam]

Iv'e been using Avast now for over a year. Free all the way.

[kanizar_the_cannibal]

I'd be careful with them. They are sometimes virus' themselves. 

[Ikkle]

I'd be careful with them. They are sometimes virus' themselves. 

Care to add some context or experiences to that? It isn't exactly helpful...

[Newbie_From_Hell]

there are some programs such as XP Security Center (not the one that comes with windows) that claim to be a anti-spyware program but is in fact spyware itself, normal the little blighter packs itself inside a root kit and hides popping up stupid messages and telling you XP Security center will fix it for £25 (or whatever).

from a genius scale you have to rate it highly, i mean its virus you actually pay for. it infects you, tells you go to www.whatever.com and pay £25 and all will be well. Absolute Genius...

onto free AV, there are loads of them now, http://www.virusbtn.com/news/2008/09_02 is a good place to start, its an independent AV testing company, and as you can see norton is never very high on the list   

AVG is one of the better ones in my opinion only thing is do a custom install and untick the link scanner and safe search, there causing havoc with all the webstats. basically what it does it every time you google something it checks all the sites, Ad-words an all. i've found it to slow down the internet browsing overall and offer no "real" benefit.

just by 2pence, spelling mistakes and all

[kanizar_the_cannibal]

What he said basically.

[Bork]

i pay for norton antivirus after i lost my last PC to a virus. i used AVG but it let whatever i was through and my harddrive got fried. norton has been airtight so far and for £50 odd a year its been worth it.

[Newbie_From_Hell]

i think its always down to personal preference.

with the last lot of virus's that came out (the DHL one) we had at least 3 customers that were using norton that it got through, we also have others that it didn't.

for me personally i wouldn't touch norton, its got too bloated, but AVG, AVAST, Kerpesky and the such like always come out on top for the AV Tests

[Newbie_From_Hell]

heres another one
http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2008_02.php

[Alchemist Voicu]

Thanks everyone so far.
You didnt make it easier

[moosh]

well i 'll add a vote for AVG
at work we have panda - a supposedly high spec, good quality AV and having downloaded some not-strictly-legal software from a certain p2p site i scanned it first and it was clean. as it was for home use, i took it home, scanned it with AVG - 6 trojans.
someone may well have a better explanation for that, but to me its a thumbs up to AVG

[Taegmar]

I was Norton until I got fried by stuff slipping past them. I use Avast now and it was recommended to me by atacam and a few other people who I play WoW with and have sworn by it for some time now. My machine is actually faster and safer now. I also ensure that I run Spybot regularly too, as recommended. So far, knock on wood, it's been the smoothest I've experienced.

[wiking]

My experience with AVG is it is always updating and wants to restart your PC  and does so whenever it feels like it regardless of scheduling times you set up.

[dogmeat]

My experience with AVG is it is always updating and wants to restart your PC  and does so whenever it feels like it regardless of scheduling times you set up.

I have the automatic updates turned off.  When a new update is available the little icon changes to show you and you can just right click on it and select "Update".  Stops it using your bandwith/ system resources when you don`t want it to.

[lapiaz]

don't know about free  ones  but I have been using this one for years now and never have a problem with it

in fact  I use to have Norton  and when I  change  eset  found  a few worms and trojans that  were never pick by norton ...  and eset run  better


https://secure.eset.co.uk/forms/trial.asp

[Super Squirrel]

I'm with newbie and never touch Noton. Personal Preference I think.

I use AVG. But to be honest, I tend to change mine quite often. I never pay for this stuff, just use a trial of a full verison until it runs out then move on to another. Most have 6 months full trial on them.

[Alchemist Voicu]

My experience with Norton is that the automatic update doesn't work.
so i asked them for help.
They gave me several solutions that didn't work.
The last one they gave me was to change things in some Register_keys even delete some delete norton and instal it again.
Because i aint a computer nerd  and know nothing about register_keys only that it might be dangerous to change it I decided not to go that far. This means i had to update each new file manually by going to their site.
Because the licence year is almost done im now going to look for another AV program.

Right now i have 2 in mind AVG and Avast

[Lupus]

Norton i wouldn't touch myself..

I'm using a free one at home can't remember the name was in a PC Pro got very good write up..Also have Zonealarms free firewall..

[whiskyrat]

My experience with AVG is it is always updating.

We have the same experience with MacAfee - whether this is good or bad is open to interpretation. 

We have a 3 PC licence and it seems to work well on the 2 newer PCs (although the latest GUI is not as good as the previous IMHO) but it really "stresses" our oldest PC to the point where the PC is really not use-able until MacAfee has done it's stuff. 

I'm either going to have to junk MacAfee on this PC or buy my better half a new PC.