QOTD: Is Free Antivirus as Good as Paid Software?

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I work as a service technician for a large company, we see upwards of 5-6 systems a day that have virus/malware or slow running related issues. We use AVG coupled with Spybot to remove any infections or correct registry problems. In most circumstances that solution will fix the system and we can get the customer out and on their way with fast turnarounds.

Although we are aware of other freeware programs out there that do just as good of a job, this method works for us.

As for Anti-Virus you have to pay for, if existing we uninstall it and inform them of the free solutions out there that will not be obtrusive on their resources and OS freedom. We do not recommend the use of Norton or McAfee, although if a customer insists that they know more than we do, we by all means let them use what they want.
 
LOL the only program I'd use from Norton AV if i had to is their corporate edition. That's the only one that contains no bloat. BUT, thankfully I don't. I use NOD32 and have not experienced any issues since day one. It bearly even consumed my ram and still have live scanning :) NOD32 FTW!
 
[citation][nom]jrsdav[/nom]As for Anti-Virus you have to pay for, if existing we uninstall it and inform them of the free solutions out there that will not be obtrusive on their resources and OS freedom. We do not recommend the use of Norton or McAfee, although if a customer insists that they know more than we do, we by all means let them use what they want.[/citation]
You know, it's one thing to recommend a free alternative, but to actually uninstall some legitimate product that the user paid money for? That seems kind of spotty to me.
 
[citation][nom]climber[/nom]So, they just build around their code and in some cases problems, rather than a redesign.[/citation]

Mcafee and Norton both use modules for AV and firewall and then a main application to control these. Both have rewritten from scratch all 3 parts recently. Many other programs get a bad rap cause a few years ago they were just bloatware with code added on to their original such as Roxio, which was rewritten around version 8 when it was bought out by sonic and offers quite a good set of core programs, assuming you disable 10 out of 14 parts of it, such as the sound and image editor.

[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]I hear they've done a complete re-write in the 2009 version to make it lighter, but by this time I'm not ready to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. [/citation]

This is the same logic that made many AMD users not switch to Intel after C2D came out cause pentium was so "bad". And I bet that turned out well for them...
 
Anti-virus? As a competent internet user all i have is a hardware based firewall on my router and a comprehensive HOSTS file on my computers and I've only had problems with a virus once out of something like 8 years now.

Ofc on my laptop i used payed software a full security suite from kaspersky i can spare a few headaches from kaspersky not so user friendly interface and use of a few system resources, i used to use norton over it but now their stuff is a bit to system heavy it is very simple to use though haven't tired the most recent version yet i go back and forth every year between the two companies just so i can complain about them.

Free vs paid? Well Paid software guarantees that none of your stuff is interfering with other protection you have on your computer and as far as scanners you can get 1-3 decent specialty scanners for mal,spy,virus,worm etc on your computer and probably be a bit more comprehensive but you can't really get as good in real time detection which unless you notice something a bit off you might not use your scanners to pick off that virus and sometimes when you get certain viruses it's already too late for some scanners to stop it.
 
[citation][nom]werfu[/nom]Depend what you're looking for, what you want it to do. In the corporate world, I'd say Symantec Anti-Virus is a realy strong solution. The other poppular solution, McAffee, is über shit, cause a whole lot of PITA and slow machines down as hell. For home use, I'd go for free, like AVG. And if you realy want to pay, then get the paid edition of a free one! And if you realy can't convince your mom that they are as good as the big ones, then get the latest norton, they made some improvements.[/citation]

I do have to agree McAffee is crap. It can see some stuff but there been times where it could not get viruses off.

Anyways. I have tried lots of free anti-viruses but i so far like Norton.
Main reason is because with kids at my house, who knows what they'll click on if im not around to watch them. It seams to me that Norton get everything off. Although i do admit that paid AV is not for everyone.
 
My experience with free antivirus has been pretty bad. They tend not to be able to deal with some difficult infections, be incomplete in their coverage, or in some cases just useless. To some of the posters, Norton and McAfee are not the only paid for antiviruses out there.
 
I am a huge fan of AVG and would recommend it to anyone if they have problems, Ive also used Avast, but i didnt really like its user interface, however it did work wonderful. Norton, is garbage, symantec literly does nothing, and McAfee causes more problems than i think its capable of fixing, EVERYTIME ive had to fix a friends computer for them, guess what was installed on it... McAfee... Its a MASSIVE resource hog and works terrible. I fixed this one computer that took around 30 min to boot up because McAfee was using so many resources ontop of it was LOADEDEDED with around 100 different viruses. Most ive ever seen.

Anyway I installed MSE the other day after running AVG on this system to give it a shot which has been reported clean. First thing MSE does is tell me i have a virus in my WinLogon.exe, and tlntsvr.exe. I was instantly impressed however it coulndt remove the infection from the winlogon file and i had to go do that myself. Another thing is MSE does use just slightly more resources and slow my boot time slightly opposed to AVG. It also lacks some other nice features and options avg free came with.

So overall since this is the first version, I would say the detection rates are great, but the program could use some work. If microsoft spends some time improving this product, which im sure they will. It could turn out to be a great product. For the time being I would still recommend AVG to people but If MSE works out a few bugs, that may change and I could become a full MSE user.
 
[citation][nom]cashkennedy[/nom]This is the same logic that made many AMD users not switch to Intel after C2D came out cause pentium was so "bad". And I bet that turned out well for them...[/citation]
That's a very good point. I should qualify: I don't feel Norton is worth the money when there are very good, free alternatives available. When they let their product stagnate and bloat for years it left a bad taste in my mouth that drove me to other products like AVG and Avast, and I've found the performance to be comparable enough that I won't bother even considering Norton until the 3rd party round-ups show that the free ones suck and Norton rocks.
 
I will never pay for Antivirus software again cause all of them are a joke and are over priced. You would think that if your going to pay top dollar for antivirus that you would get awsome results, but instead all you get is more headaches and more viruses. Why pay when you can get better for free.


 
Free antivirus is better than paid software.
Besides, who stand to benefit the most from computer malware and viruses? That's right, the paid antivirus software companies! Meaning, they are the most likely creators of viruses.
If every antivirus company was not for profit, I bet we would see alot less new viruses being created.
 
Wow I got -4 for my comment about symantec SEP being good for use in a company. Shows a couple things. One, a lot of people are uneducated on here about the product. And two, a lot of people on here don't care about internal network security at all. SEP severely limits the possibility of network broadcast storms for one example. Have fun with your free software guys, but don't expect that the free ones will throw in a free soft firewall as well.
 
Also I should mention that in the past I had good results with these two pieces of software: spybot seek & destroy and superantispyware


Just be careful which link you choose to download free antivirus software on the internet. Sure you will be taken to a web page that has the one you want to download, but often times sites cram a bunch of tools on the web pages and make it confusing to the user which link to click "download now" might give you a useless registry cleaner software for example or could give you some spyware. Just look at the link in the bottom of your browser while you hover the mouse over it before you click to download to make sure that it is the right file.
 
I work for a large computer repair company and I see on average 4 or 5 infected PCs come in every day. Without bringing any opinions into it - I see (in order, from everyday users):
1. AVG
2. Norton (even 2009)
3. McAfee
4. Expired whatever or none
5. Avast

If I see a computer with AVG I assume it is infected (and I'm right about 95% of the time). Norton has a huge market share, so I would expect high numbers of infections, but I still don't think it pulls its weight. Similar to McAfee, they have abused their brand names and let their products drop in quality.

I have used/seen/like Trend Micro, Webroot, Kaspersky, NOD32, and Avira on the free side (all AV/AS versions, nothing with a firewall - adds too many problems). So I guess I lean heavily towards paid antivirus solutions because I value peoples' time - how many hours are wasted from the average infection? And this infection could've been prevented for a $30-40 per year investment in a decent antivirus? Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'm not saying everybody needs government-level antivirus protection, but I don't think $40 is a crazy price.
 
Is free ESET security good?
I ask because yesterday it detected a virus in my pen-drive. And when I scanned it, it said it removed the virus succesfully, and all of a sudden a minute later 3 windows magically opened. So I scanned the pen-drive again and again and it always detected the same virus, in the same places(ubuntu 9.04, kubuntu 9.04, and a url from Toms hardware). I then thought to be forced to format my entire pen-drfive( not remembering all of my college files[including my curriculum vitae] were in there). ESET dissapointed me then, but now I don't know whjere the whole problem was.
 
As much as I liked free AV versus paid, AVG free doesn't detect root kits. Getting burned by this once, I installed ESET NOD32 and haven't looked back.
 
I have used AVG for years, on many PCs. I traveled extensively in Asia, connected to scary shared networks and must have had my PCs assaulted by all manner of malicious code. I've had no problems. Norton, on the other hand, is the proverbial tar baby. Once you "touch it", you practically have to do a clean re-install to get rid of its intrusive yet inefficient tendrils.
 
Norton has always proven itself complete garbage with me. I switched to AVG years ago, but when AVG8 came out, I switched to avast! instead (AVG8 is a resource hog). I put avast! along with MBAM on everybody's computer I worked on and it's proven itself worthy time and time again. Unless ALWIL manages to screw up avast!, I'm rolling with it (combined with MBAM) from now on.
 
I use Spybot, AVG and Outpost firewall. All free (you need version 1.0 of outpost, get it from oldversion.com) Spybot detects rootkits, AVG is for run of the mill well known virii, and outpost is an incredibly easy to use lightweight software firewall.

Zonealarm caused a memory leak on my old machine, eating 800 Megs of ram on my old 1 gb machine.

I have had a couple of issues where it was difficult to clean a rootkit off my machine when I lapsed at scanning with spybot, but other than that I have had no real troubles. Used hijack this and killbox to sort that last time around.

And BTW my work used Mcaffee and still got horrible infections. I think that common sense and IQ are the most important factors.

P.S. Norton is a dog.
 
Check out these sites for good comparisons

Firewalls: http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge/results.php

Antivirus: http://www.av-comparatives.org/home

I see lot of people come in with infected McAfee, and free AVG more than anything else. I see the fewest infected Kaspersky protected systems. In my experience free products don't catch as many viruses on average. I've been impressed with AVIRA though and have been using it recently, in conjunction with Comodo Firewall, which rates good at firewall but the AV components is lacking. From what i can tell, its biggest shortcoming is that when heuristics are set to high it catches too many false positives.
 
I used AVG for a while. Now days I'm using Avast Home Free Edition. Far as I'm concerned, it seems to work as well or better. Low system overhead anyhow.

I have refused to use/buy Norton or McAfee for years...
 
I love NIS 2009 and the new 2010 is just as good if not even better. I have been using Norton's for many years, and it did have a slow down, but now it rocks. Fast, fast, fsat and not bloated, as least not as far as I can see.
 
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