Definitive Best Antivirus 2010

[Barney T. Administrators]

An updated "Best Antivirus" for 2010. 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.

[aftas]

MSE

+1

[progh]

MSE :D

[lamminium]

Well... in Avast Free 5, you can just fill in your name and email address (yea, just two fields) right inside the program to activate it. It's a fairly quick process.

If you don't like Avast any more, perhaps try Avira Free. :)

[Technique]

It's not that i don't like Avast, it's that i don't like the annoying pop up upon start up & i can't find how to disable it, even using google.

As for MSE, i remember reading some members not liking it on 64 bit machines (i'm running Win7 64bit).

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

Registration for Avast is free! Basically, they want your email address so that they can send you promotional offers and crap like that. If you don't want that, then use a temporary email service to register.

[treemonster]

I'm using Avira and I'm quite happy with it.

i like it too, though some people don't like the daily nag at updating, but after like 7 years of using it i'm used to it, although for some reason on win7 x64 ult it doesn't update automatically all the time anymore.

aside from MSE i don't think you're going to find an AV for free that doesn't have nagging popups of some kind. that's the price you pay for FREE. if there is one then i'll stand corrected, but it seems like a standard practice for these year lond free tirals that you can just renew after they're done. pretty small price to pay for something as good as avira imho.

[Kenji]

MSE.

Edit: I run it on 7 x64 with no issues what so ever.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Antivir does the trick for me, although as treemonster pointed out there is the daily nag when it updates it's virus definitions. But how difficult is it to hit the "OK" button and have it disappear?

[Nagisan]

In terms of detection (from my experience): Avast, Avira (tied pretty close to Avast, though it had many more false positives in my experience), MSE

In terms of ease of use: MSE, Avast (register once a year), Avira (ad popup every time it updates).

Thats just my own experience for those three major free AVs, but I have noticed MSE to be one of the worst out of the major free AVs in detection rate, but its super simple to use.

[Julius Caro]

MSE.

Edit: I run it on 7 x64 with no issues what so ever.

+1. MSE is great . Mainly because it rarely ever bothers me.

[HoodiBoY]

+1 for MSE..

[Allis]

+1 for MSE...

[John S. Veteran]

[Threads Merged]

[0trunk]

+1 MSE

[Chaltalian]

Another +1 for MSE!

[+Warwagon MVC]

Installed FREE Avast a month ago.

Now i'm getting registration/activation notices which i've just looked in to disabling as they're irritating (don't want to pay for a program - hence FREE software required).

Noticed the program itself now no longer updates & it's no good if you've an anti virus program that wont stay up to date.

So any FREE suggestions?

With Avast version 5, no product key is required. You can registry directly from inside Avast just needing to give it an email address and name. You can make up both of them.

[war]

"None" option would have been nice. :p

But I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials now that AVG sucks (I uninstalled thousands of installs after 7.0+).

[sennan]

Running MSE and NOD32 together.

[Yorak]

Running MSE and NOD32 together.

Uh, that's redundant. May I ask why?

[Bengal34]

Antivirus 360

[Instinct]

I also vote for ESET NOD32 (I use Smart Security), but Microsoft Security Essentials is close second and best free product!

[Astra.Xtreme]

Running MSE and NOD32 together.

lol seriously?

I don't use/need antivirus, but I install MSE on computers I service.

[Amodin]

MSE for me at home, Forefront on business end. Both run the same engine, and Forefront for Exchange utilizes 10 different scanners for the mail store.

MS has really done a great job with their AV.

[Flawed]

Other (please specify):

GNU/Linux

[nubs]

Currently using ESET NOD 32. I love it and have never had problems with viruses while I have used it. On several occasions it has stopped viruses from web sites and from programs. Haven't used many other recent AV programs so I can't exactly say its the best, but it's good enough for me.