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.

[Tarzan]

Ive dumped Avira Premium for MSE - about time MS got finger out and made an AV for Grand ma.

But extremely light? Well yes runs smooth but look at memory usage. On my 64bit Vista I see 83mb right now and that is private working set! I dont care, others will. Biggest problem for MSE could be Task Manager screenshots :) Might improve, not yet final.

Most of the old companies deserves to be eating up by MSE but I hope soon to be released Avast 5 becomes popular. Looking very good. Avast have at least always delivered an almost full featured free product.

[thr33n1l13]

I find http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparative...iews/main-tests to be helpful when looking for some independent tests about Anti-virus products.

Currently I use Avast Home Edition (since money is tight). However, if I were to choose a "Pay-For" product, I would choose either NOD32 or Kaspersky.

I must admit that Norton's Gamer Edition is tempting for the fact that it disables itself automatically when gaming. But Norton left such a bad taste in my mouth, from my experiences with it in the past. LOL

[Oz.]

Antivir Personal best & free antivirus :)

http://free-av.com/

+1

Also you can use Avira AntiVir Premium with free license promotions which is great.

[bjoswald]

Windows: MSE

Linux: ClamAV

[+Warwagon MVC]

I vote MSE. So far I have it installed on all my machines. It works great.

[Ambroos]

MSE ^^

[Hani]

MSE FTW!

[max84]

MSE 1.0

[Windbag]

Definitely NOD32. Using it from version 2.7.

[null_]

Microsoft Security Essentials RTW!

[alex_13]

Hey guys, good stuff all around.

One quick question, what would you say is the lightest AV (Paid and Free) out there right now? What I mean by lightest is low on system resources.

[null_]

Hey guys, good stuff all around.

One quick question, what would you say is the lightest AV (Paid and Free) out there right now? What I mean by lightest is low on system resources.

The lightest free anti-virus seems to be Microsoft Security Essentials. It may at times use more memory than most other anti-virus solutions, but there is noticible impact on performance and it has a very clean, streamlined user interface.

For a paid solution, the lightest would most likely be either Avira Premium or NOD32.

Just my 2 cents.

[rafaqueque]

Currently i'm using Microsoft Security Essentials. So far so good.

It runs smooth and I can't even notice that the process is running.

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

I was on AVAST v4 but went to MSE since the BETA and up until today the Final but now on AVAST v5 BETA2 and it's absolutely amazing, the speed, the UI, the features and most of all when I load a folder with many file variants (my software folder for example) it loads the folder much faster than MSE which takes ages to scan the contents of the folder the first time round as MSMPENG.EXE seems to take up most of the CPU during the scan which seems to be a common problem but I have a 3.6GHz quad so didn't mind much....

[Zmijutin]

I was on AVAST v4 but went to MSE since the BETA and up until today the Final but now on AVAST v5 BETA2 and it's absolutely amazing, the speed, the UI, the features and most of all when I load a folder with many file variants (my software folder for example) it loads the folder much faster than MSE which takes ages to scan the contents of the folder the first time round as MSMPENG.EXE seems to take up most of the CPU during the scan which seems to be a common problem but I have a 3.6GHz quad so didn't mind much....

Avast! v5?? Nice, very nice. Can you tell me how much RAM is using? Is it faster (lighter) than v4.8?

Edited October 18, 2009 by TomoSnake

[+bomberh Subscriber²]

I am using Microsoft Security Essentials.

It works in the background, not a system hogger and its free. It works very well too.

Why is Microsoft Security Essentials not in the listing to vote?? or are you using OneCare as this option as well??

[TokiToki]

Why is Microsoft Security Essentials not in the listing to vote?? or are you using OneCare as this option as well??

It's pretty obvious. The poll was created way back in January. MSE wasn't even released as a public beta until late June.

As a side note: I too am using MSE on all of my computers.

[Robbie Khan Reviews]

Avast! v5?? Nice, very nice. Can you tell me how much RAM is using? Is it faster (lighter) than v4.8?

The V5 UI uses a mere 8MB of RAM, on my 64bit system the service itself uses 48MB which is perfectly fine, I've never seen it use much CPU power though so is much more efficient than MSE and previous AVAST versions. Services are only dual now, no longer have multiple services, just one service and one ui process!

[Zmijutin]

The V5 UI uses a mere 8MB of RAM, on my 64bit system the service itself uses 48MB which is perfectly fine, I've never seen it use much CPU power though so is much more efficient than MSE and previous AVAST versions. Services are only dual now, no longer have multiple services, just one service and one ui process!

That's good. I'm using v4.8, and I'm running 3 proccesses in the moment. GUI ~ 1.3MB ; A-V service 19MB and Web shield ~40MB ... So that is pretty good. Nice version, can't wait to see and try final build.

[MikeChipshop Member]

Really pleased with how MSE is performing :punk:

[Zmijutin]

I still can't decide ... Avast or MSE ... :D

[lammmetak]

u miss gdata which uses 2 scanners in 1 go. It is rated the best for several times.

[b1kshad0w]

u miss gdata which uses 2 scanners in 1 go. It is rated the best for several times.

I was going to vote for Gdata, but it wasn't in the list.

[Tai]

Have just ditched Nod32 for MSE and running fine, also detected a Trojan Nod seems to have missed.

Avast v5 looks impressive though .. anyone know when it will go final ?

[Mambo Boy]

Is there a reason why Panda AV has such a low vote count? I had the opportunity to get a free 1-year license for the security suite last week and so far it's great. Also it's using under 10MB ram in total (thats AV, anti-malware and the firewall), so it's far from a resource hog.

I'd been using Avira Antivir previously, and for a free product is superb, but the update times were getting ridiculous (averaging 0.4kb/sec). I was getting something like 30-40 minute download times for an update around 5mb big! Also I had to set the detection rate to low as the number of false positives was getting irritating.