Definitive Best Antivirus 2009

[Barney T. Administrators]

An updated "Best Antivirus" for 2009. Please use this as a reference when researching antivirus utilities. As time goes on, the poll can be updated to add further options.

Happy Voting.

[evo0o]

Currently using an old laptop with a AMD Turion 64 1.79GHz processor and 384MB of RAM.

Long story short, I installed Norton and realized it's a memory hog and generally when it does it's 'auto-protect' features, it lags me to hell and I lag even switching between Explorer windows!

Was wondering which free alternative is best for this old computer, note: it has to be free and basically, idiot-proof. Hopefully it's like a one-time install and has an update feature that allows the definitions to be updated with a click similar to Norton's 'Live Update.'

Thanks for the help!

[Kudo]

Avast or AVG

Hope that helps :)

Good luck!

[-Vivicidal-]

I'd say Avast - personal preference

[evo0o]

thanks. will look into it!

[deletedxyz]

Avira AntiVir. I have it installed on my laptop and it supposedly has the best detection rates. Best of all, it's free.

[John S. Veteran]

[Threads Merged]

[soldier1st]

what about Rising Antivirus 2009?it seems to be good and they have a free version.

[Arkaic]

AVG for me. :)

[th3rEsa]

After having my experiences with AVG (too many false alarms for me), Avira (same) and avast! (weird UI, not that good recognition either), I tend to say: Don't use AV scanners which have free versions...

So I vote for NOD32. Had many pro's in latest AV Comparatives, too.

[slip400]

Symantec Corporate, but its dead now

[Somnus]

Avira Antivir Premium 9, but my license is about to run out, so I am looking at alternatives.

It was great for the year that I had it, but at $35CDN renewal fee, when I can buy a license for NOD32 for $20, or Kaspersky off eBay for $12, it just doesn't make any sense.

The license _could_ be purchased for $24, but you have to donate 5 Euros for a Contribution to the Auerbach Foundation, which is crap, because I wouldn't choose that charity if I had to. I don't like it that my more is being contributed to something that I know nothing about, and I _have_ to give it if I want a license. Personally quite a horrible thing for a company to do.

So if anyone knows were I can get a cheap license for Avira, please let me know. I would like to continue using it, but not under the current way of renewal.

[Feyer]

My choiсe is -Kaspersky with unlimited trial ;)

[Chris123NT]

Morro > all, and it's not even out of beta yet :laugh:

[mujjuman]

How about best free antivirus? :p

[Elessar]

Norton Internet Security 2009.

[qdave]

Morro > all, and it's not even out of beta yet :laugh:

I Agree on that :)

[th3rEsa]

How about best free antivirus? :p

Like "best smelling dogsh*t"?

[Loso]

what other protection program is good to run along side nod32? (is Eset Smart Security any good?)

[th3rEsa]

Why do you need more at all?

A good virus scanner protects against viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits and malware. What else do you think of?

Come on... leave your RAM alone.

:rolleyes:

[tattoo79]

According to the latest Retrospective/Proactive Test conducted on May 2009 by www.av-comparatives.org. , proactive detection of new sample (windows viruses,worms,backdoors,trojans & other malware) , the top 4 in order of total detections in % -

1. AVIRA AntiVir Premium 8.2 - 69%

2.Microsoft Live OneCare 2.5 - 60%

3. ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 3.0 - 56%

4.Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 - 50%

[xKratosx]

I've used Avira for quite some time, and was always impressed with how silently it ran in the background.

A little too silently it would seem, as my computer has a virus (Win32.Horst - Ad-Aware picked it up) and I think it's responsible for my Gmail account getting hacked, as well as two PayPal-esque accounts being hacked also, with quite a considerable amount of money in. Nightmare.

With that in mind, which other free AV would you guys recommend, that isn't AVIRA? Ideally I want Nod32, but I run a few virtual machines which I assume would all need their own license.

[th3rEsa]

Sure, but NOD32 licenses aren't too expensive.

[null_]

I'm not a huge fan of NOD32 as I may have pointed out previously (can't remember if I did or not). It seems that starting with version 3.0 of NOD32 and the introduction of ESET Smart Security that the quality of their software has gone down hill in various ways... including, but not limited to issues surrounding NOD32 on 64-bit Windows machines causing STOP errors and various system hangs, incompatibility with Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (which has now been fixed, but some users continue to report issues, etc).

At the moment, I'm using AVG Free 8.5, after having tried Avira and Avast, as it seems to be the cleanest solution of them both. Once Microsoft Security Essentials is finalized later this year, I imagine I'll be switching over to that.

[th3rEsa]

So you think free AV products are more secure than NOD32?

[Innitaru]

Got the Microsoft Security Essentials beta installed.