Free AV vs paid
Discussion
After witnessing some tantrum throwing on another forum, I'm intrigued to know the overall feel for free AV vs paid.
Seemed to be an awful lot of "AVG/Avast/MSE is like a BJ to a hacker" and "They're subsections of a full program" comments.
While I'm not naive enough to think they're necessarily as good as the pay for version, I've never been lead to believe they're as bad as those comments would suggest.
Are they fit for purpose (ie, free, you pay your money and take your choice), or not even that?
Seemed to be an awful lot of "AVG/Avast/MSE is like a BJ to a hacker" and "They're subsections of a full program" comments.
While I'm not naive enough to think they're necessarily as good as the pay for version, I've never been lead to believe they're as bad as those comments would suggest.
Are they fit for purpose (ie, free, you pay your money and take your choice), or not even that?
Used to use paid versions of McAfee and Norton, PC slowed down and it STILL got viruses. Been using Avast free for a year now & no problems. Funnily enough when first installing Avast it claimed to find viruses that had been there for the previous months when McAfee was saying all was fine.
With the possible exception of MSE, the others in the list are not free, per se. They are single user zero cost licences to use the program. Paid upgrades are available for all of them, on a personal user basis.
I'm not aware of any of them that are free for corporate use.
As far as them being subsections of other programs, erm, well yes, I don't want anti-phishing in that, I have it elsewhere, I dont want antimalware, I use something else, I absolutely dont want your crappy firewall, I use something else.
Horses for courses.
I use free AV for me and my family, and have done for the last 15 years.
I'm not aware of any of them that are free for corporate use.
As far as them being subsections of other programs, erm, well yes, I don't want anti-phishing in that, I have it elsewhere, I dont want antimalware, I use something else, I absolutely dont want your crappy firewall, I use something else.
Horses for courses.
I use free AV for me and my family, and have done for the last 15 years.
No AV product will detect 100% of viruses, but the free ones are often just as good as (and sometimes better than) the paid ones. there are many companies that do regualr detection tests of all the packages - here is one one December 09 (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/summary/summary2009.pdf).
Microsoft Security essentials generally scores very well and is my preferred free option as it's also the most unobtrusive.
Microsoft Security essentials generally scores very well and is my preferred free option as it's also the most unobtrusive.
randlemarcus said:
With the possible exception of MSE, the others in the list are not free, per se. They are single user zero cost licences to use the program. Paid upgrades are available for all of them, on a personal user basis.
I'm not aware of any of them that are free for corporate use.
As far as them being subsections of other programs, erm, well yes, I don't want anti-phishing in that, I have it elsewhere, I dont want antimalware, I use something else, I absolutely dont want your crappy firewall, I use something else.
Horses for courses.
I use free AV for me and my family, and have done for the last 15 years.
Yes, sorry should have said, for home use where they're, effectively, free.I'm not aware of any of them that are free for corporate use.
As far as them being subsections of other programs, erm, well yes, I don't want anti-phishing in that, I have it elsewhere, I dont want antimalware, I use something else, I absolutely dont want your crappy firewall, I use something else.
Horses for courses.
I use free AV for me and my family, and have done for the last 15 years.
I agree about the anti this, anti that...I have other solutions for those.
Also, my understanding is that comparing Norton now to 2 years ago is a little unfair....it's not the heinous POS it used to be.
I've used free products ever since I've had computers and never picked up a virus.
If you want to be completely security conscious, don't use Windows in the first place, if a hackers wants to get in, they'll get in, antivirus or not.
Most computers I've fixed that were riddled with virusses are from non tech savvy people with McAfee/ Norton, those 2 aren't worth a penny. For your average home user, free versions of security software are adequate and generally fit for purpose
If you want to be completely security conscious, don't use Windows in the first place, if a hackers wants to get in, they'll get in, antivirus or not.
Most computers I've fixed that were riddled with virusses are from non tech savvy people with McAfee/ Norton, those 2 aren't worth a penny. For your average home user, free versions of security software are adequate and generally fit for purpose
DrTre said:
Also, my understanding is that comparing Norton now to 2 years ago is a little unfair....it's not the heinous POS it used to be.
Don't care. Wont work on kit with it on, and absolutely will not deploy in a corporate environment, ever again, simply because of how bad it has been since the mid 90's. So there :P 
DrTre said:
randlemarcus said:
With the possible exception of MSE, the others in the list are not free, per se. They are single user zero cost licences to use the program. Paid upgrades are available for all of them, on a personal user basis.
I'm not aware of any of them that are free for corporate use.
As far as them being subsections of other programs, erm, well yes, I don't want anti-phishing in that, I have it elsewhere, I dont want antimalware, I use something else, I absolutely dont want your crappy firewall, I use something else.
Horses for courses.
I use free AV for me and my family, and have done for the last 15 years.
Yes, sorry should have said, for home use where they're, effectively, free.I'm not aware of any of them that are free for corporate use.
As far as them being subsections of other programs, erm, well yes, I don't want anti-phishing in that, I have it elsewhere, I dont want antimalware, I use something else, I absolutely dont want your crappy firewall, I use something else.
Horses for courses.
I use free AV for me and my family, and have done for the last 15 years.
I agree about the anti this, anti that...I have other solutions for those.
Also, my understanding is that comparing Norton now to 2 years ago is a little unfair....it's not the heinous POS it used to be.
I've not had any virus problems at home since I've been using Avast/AVG and lattery MSE.
Man-At-Arms said:
randlemarcus said:
I dont want antimalware,
why did i read that as animalware ? !I echo randlemarcus's comments. I've never paid for AV, never will.
Work is a different situation and I don't have to care about how much they pay for their AV.
DrTre said:
After witnessing some tantrum throwing on another forum, I'm intrigued to know the overall feel for free AV vs paid.
Seemed to be an awful lot of "AVG/Avast/MSE is like a BJ to a hacker" and "They're subsections of a full program" comments.
While I'm not naive enough to think they're necessarily as good as the pay for version, I've never been lead to believe they're as bad as those comments would suggest.
Are they fit for purpose (ie, free, you pay your money and take your choice), or not even that?
As other posters have pointed out you can get by with just the free versions. But they also have pointed out they use other products for other features (phishing,firewall, etc)Seemed to be an awful lot of "AVG/Avast/MSE is like a BJ to a hacker" and "They're subsections of a full program" comments.
While I'm not naive enough to think they're necessarily as good as the pay for version, I've never been lead to believe they're as bad as those comments would suggest.
Are they fit for purpose (ie, free, you pay your money and take your choice), or not even that?
You do get what you pay for. It depends what you want or understand you need and how much time you want to spend on getting everything to work.
For eample: if you have a laptop which you use at home via wifi and also use at public wifi in town, it would be handy that your firewall recognises the two different wireless connections and modifies the firewall rules to suit. After all you don't want to be sharing your shared documents/pictures or media player selections with the great unwashed, only with those at home.
If you're like me and you are supporting individuals and SME's, then your going to want to suggest something that you are happy to support and will save them money by you not having to go to them and rebuild their systems ( generally i have better , more interesting things to do).
To that end, i recommend Trend Internet Security, I don't sell it , they go online and download it or buy at the store.
The yearly subscription equates to about an hour of my time, so they can choose something else like MSE, i'll support them all, just the likelyhood is that I will be dealing with a malware infection on their PC within the year
Personally I don't like AVG,AVAST or Nortons. but that is just me and my experiance YMMV.
My experiance with malwarebytes is that it is a bit aggressive in stateing "this file is dubious" and I would not go blindly deleting all the things it says is wrong.
If you do get an infection on a pc , then it is worthwhile running a number of av products (serially) on the PC to clean up fragments of infections that the other may of missed.
SpunkyMonkey said:
No AV product will detect 100% of viruses, but the free ones are often just as good as (and sometimes better than) the paid ones. there are many companies that do regualr detection tests of all the packages - here is one one December 09 (http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/summary/summary2009.pdf).
Microsoft Security essentials generally scores very well and is my preferred free option as it's also the most unobtrusive.
Agreed.Microsoft Security essentials generally scores very well and is my preferred free option as it's also the most unobtrusive.
At work we use McAfee and at home and for everyone else I recommend Microsoft Essentials which is a excellent free product.
Microsoft is the anomaly though since it is effectively an true equivalent to a paid product, MS aren't doing this out of altruism, they are doing it to clean up their reputation and they throw massive amounts of money at the product.
I also love the fact the MS solution doesn't throw up boxes every so often asking the user what would they like to do, you know in the way some of the others say do you want to allow xxx.exe to connect the internet.
Thanks for the responses.
At work I put in Kaspersky and have been happy with it, it picks things up and cleans them no issue, centrally managed, all cool.
At home I've used AVG and now avast, and on other machines MSE. I've not fallen victim to anything (maybe once, over 10 years ago) with these.
I guess my query could have more simply been "are these people speaking out of their arses" to which the answer appears to be, yes.
At work I put in Kaspersky and have been happy with it, it picks things up and cleans them no issue, centrally managed, all cool.
At home I've used AVG and now avast, and on other machines MSE. I've not fallen victim to anything (maybe once, over 10 years ago) with these.
I guess my query could have more simply been "are these people speaking out of their arses" to which the answer appears to be, yes.
I used to use NOD32 and still believe it to be the best out there. However, when the subscription was up , I replaced it with the free MSE. The Microsoft offering is actually very good, as it just sits there in the background and doesn't need constant reassuring/hand-holding like some other AV offerings. Not too heavy on resources either. Microsoft's offering is more than sufficient assuming you have a hardware firewall (e.g. router) and don't actively set out to infect your machine.
I gave up with anti-virus programs a while ago. They're only ever as good as the latest download and tend to slow/nanny the computer more than I'm happy with.
I don't tend to visit the kind of sites or open the kind of attachments that'll give me problems and, if I do, I can usually wipe things away manually.
Sprawling antivirus programs seem worse than the viruses you're trying to avoid, sometimes.
I don't tend to visit the kind of sites or open the kind of attachments that'll give me problems and, if I do, I can usually wipe things away manually.
Sprawling antivirus programs seem worse than the viruses you're trying to avoid, sometimes.
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