If you are thinking about protecting your computer with a free anti-virus program, you should learn about the most popular programs. The following three programs are the highest rated and the most popular.
AntiVir Personal Edition programs might be the best at detecting and removing viruses. PC World tested three programs and gave the highest marks to AntiVir’s Personal Edition Classic 6.32. One of the biggest problems with the AntiVir programs is the inability to scan emails. As you might know, one of the biggest sources of viruses is email attachments. It you select AntiVir as your free anti-virus program; realize that your email attachments are not scanned. Follow email precautions by not opening any attachments that you are not expecting and never opening an attachment if you don’t know who sent it.
Second place for the free softwares in the PC World test went to Alwil software by AVAST. This program did not catch quite as many of the viruses as the AntiVir software and it was also slower. What it did do was scan incoming email attachments. It also has a media-player style interface that (for some reason) impressed the testers.
The third place for free anti-virus software went to AVG and their Grisoft AVG Free Edition 7.1. While the software failed to catch as many of the viruses as the previous two programs, it was also a little faster than the previous two programs. Also, this program does offer some technical support via email. Not bad for a free program.
AntiVir, AVAST, and AVG are the best of the free anti-virus programs, however, they aren’t that great when they are compared to commercial programs. As one review said, they are better than nothing. The problem with these free programs is that they aren’t very flexible; they are unable to catch backdoor viruses, and they don’t protect against things like adware and spyware.
An important thing to know about the free software is that none of it is as comprehensive as commercial programs. PC World ranked 10 different software programs. The free programs ranked as #7, #8, and #10. This means that even though the AntiVir program was the best of the free programs, it was fourth from the bottom overall. This might not be the quality of protection that you want for your PC
If you want to be fully protected but don’t want to shell out the 50 bucks or so for a commercial program, you might consider options for getting a commercial program for free. There are free trial offers on some of the big name programs; of course, these trial offers are for fairly short time frames (like two weeks to a month). Still, there might be a reason that you only need protection for a short time. There are also options to receive anti-virus software “free”. Meaning you don’t pay for it but you have to do something for it.
Go to thefreesite.com, and you can learn how to get Norton anti-virus protection for “free”. The price of this free software is that you have to participate in a survey and then you have to wait for the software. The software CDs will be mailed to you, free of charge, but the website suggests that the waiting time will be between 8 and 10 weeks. Often, people don’t have the option of waiting that long to protect their computers. However, you can take the gamble, download one of the free programs, and use that program while you wait for your commercial program to arrive.