Anti-Virus

Sally Bobby

Hi,
Could anyone help..?
My Norton anti-virus is due for renewal. It cost me 100euro last year.
I have a HP laptop. I am not very technical & only use my laptop for email, photos, word documents & itunes etc.
What would suit my needs for security...and can anyone recommend me a company. I think I'm overpaying.

Tks a mill.

HeidiHeidi

I have pretty similar usage to you, and I use AVG free. Mostly on the basis that someone once said that if they're not charging you, they have less of a vested interest in viruses getting into your computer (and ergo scaring you into buying even more protection). I haven't the faintest idea if that's true or not, I might add.

But what I can say is that in the years that I've been using it I've never been hacked or had a virus attack, or any other trouble whatsoever

*crosses fingers in case I'm jinxing myself here*

ETA - I sure as hell wouldn't be paying 100 quid a year for personal usage security! Open to correction on that, but that's my opinion FWIW

pawrick

If you want to go the paid route I'd recommend shopping around and even within a particular brand the most expensive option is not always the best for your needs

amazon often have better offers compared to buying direct for the same product (2012 versions wil update on install - packaging is just out of date so price is lower in those instances)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_6?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=antivirus&sprefix=antivi%2Caps%2C207

Also ensure that auto renew is not selected on your Norton account if you intend to switch


I use kaspersky internet security on this laptop and free security essentials on a spare one less often used. Haven't had an issue with either.

Morpork

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/security-essentials-download

MSE is free, light, updates often and silently, has good definitions etc.

AVG has become bloated.

I'd rather pour mayonnaise all over my pc than install Norton for free, much less pay for it.

Uninstall Norton first; download MSE second.

Pat Mustard

Avast free gets very good reviews and is much lighter than AVG free.

LoLth

AVG free (and paid) has been getting some bad reviews of late for being a bit of a system hog and from my own personal experience has cause issues on a small network where it messed up routing so that *only* PCs on the network with AVG installed could access the internet, all other PCs could not resolve the gateway - tracked the issue down to the firewall component of AVG which kept re-enabling itself! (small peer to peer network, no domain controller jsut a few PCs and an eircom router)

paid AV: Bitdefender is getting great reviews , ESET and vipre are pretty good for being non-intrusive. (note: Vipre are currently doing a 10PC pack for 2 years for 29.99)

free: MSE has gotten criticism recently for lack of performance but I've not had any problems with it in the past. AVG used to be my AV of choice but it got bloaty and cumbersome . I'm hearing good stuff about Avast

IamMetaldave

LoLth wrote: »

paid AV: Bitdefender is getting great reviews

I can vouch for BitDefender. I have been using it for 3 years and it is fantastic. I have had no issues with virus or malware. It works in the background with no drag on the PC/laptops I have it installed on. You can pick it up for around €30 for 3 licences.

Trend Micro is also very good.

The free ones mentioned above are also great options if you go not want to spend money.

2ndcoming

I've had McAfee on my previous laptop and having just got a new Asus I'm getting prompted all the time to set it up. However, I found it very annoying on my last laptop, constantly seeking restarts to install updates and running scans.

Is MSE a truly silent and light alternative?

2ndcoming

Interesting. What would you suggest for a less attention seeking alternative to McAfee?

AnCatDubh

bedlam wrote: »

It's silent for a reason...

The follow on link to this makes for an interesting read / comparison.

http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/home-user/windows-7/sepoct-2012/

Personally, I've used AVG, MS Security Essentials, and Avast.

I found AVG wanted to take over my machine - constantly looking to provide you with extra crap that you don't want but they may make a buck out of, take over search (which you never went looking for them to do), and generally became as others have said it had appeared to me that it was getting more and more bloated all the time (one machine I was using it on was a netbook so something unnecessarily taking resource wasn't going to be welcome to me for this).

Avast was grand but at upgrade/update time went a bit funny looking for me to be on a paid option (can't remember the specifics) so I ditched it.

MS Security Essentials had been recommended around here previously, so I gave it a go, and for it's automated and mostly silent operation, and no noticeable degradation of machine performance, i'm very pleased with it albeit reading the link above i'd need to consider it future usefulness (i'd need to fully understand it's weakest marking area being the zero day attacks and asses how much that is of a worry for me).

Thankfully, virus hasn't ever been a problem for me including with Microsoft Security Essentials so I can't say any of the three free options are better than the others - they all did the job expected just some of them did themselves out of a future on my machines. Anti virus doesn't have to cost a small fortune (100 bucks at this stage fits that category), though you can see from the comparisons in the link that the paid options may overall be best (as per the tests run).

GarIT

If you are still using anti-virus that's your first problem. An anti-virus package protects you from a maximum of 50% of computer threats. You need an internet security package. Comodo is the best free one. AVG and MSE aren't internet security. Norton is by far the best for protection but as you can probably see from here it can be quite annoying that said the 2013 version is much better than previous editions. Kaspersky is a good paid alternative to Norton. Whatever you get it has to be internet security and not antivirus.

Squeaky the Squirrel

Microsoft Security Essentials fails anti-virus certification test, Redmond challenges results

Squeaky the Squirrel

Squeaky the Squirrel wrote: »

Microsoft Security Essentials fails anti-virus certification test, Redmond challenges results

Jolly, quoting meself!

AV-Test boss dismisses Microsoft criticism of malware test results