Best Free Antivirus

When trying to decide which antivirus to use, you can be overwhelmed by the number of software choices out there! These range from full blown commercial security suites, such as those by Norton and McAfee to standalone antivirus packages, to those with antivirus plus firewall or antivirus plus antispyware.  So how do you decide? Antispyware in full is beyond the scope of this article, so see my other article here for info on that: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/133994_how-to-keep-your-pc-clean-from-spyware

This article is purely to guide you in which antivirus download to make to ensure your pc is kept virus free. 

Commercial or freeware? This is a question often discussed and asked.  Surely paid for expensive products like Norton or McAfee provide much better antivirus protection as these are trusted names and the software comes with a big manual and installs loads of tools, so it must be good right? Wrong, not necessarily.  These products are aimed at the less savy pc user, who doesn't know what they need and they just pick up one of these off the shelf packages to protect their pc.  While it may do an ok job, in my opinion, it slows down your pc as the software is very bloated, high on memory and resource usage and not even the best at preventing viruses, so don't always assume commerical software is best.

Choose the freeware one with the most downloads at download.com? This may seem like the answer, and for some things it is a good indication of a good piece of software, but all this tells you is which one has been 'made' most popular, through promotion, advertising, lack of research etc, not necessarily which is the best for the job.

So how do you choose? Do your research, read reviews, speak to others, compare a few products that keep getting talked about on forums, maybe try them out and see which you think is best.  Ok, so you maybe didn't come here to be fobbed off with that answer, so if you're in a hurry, here's my top choice:

Avast free.  Not AVG you say? That's right and here is why.  AVG free is the most 'popular' choice and widely used and does a good job, but it does not protect against rootkits or spyware in their free version, whereas Avast does.  AVG is also heavier on resources that Avast and may affect your PC performance more.  But what about Avira Antivir? That has an annoying popup to use the freeware version and nobody likes those! Avast is also updated frequently and has the option to perform a pre-windows boot scan, which many others like AVG do not.  This is useful if you think you have a virus you cannot get rid of while windows is running.  It also has a resident, network, P2P and IM shields, which are missing from many other antivirus apps.

I do not work for Avast or any other software company and do not make any money whether you choose it or not, as after all I'm talking about the free version of it.  I'm just giving my recommendations based on technical knowledge and research I have carried out to help you make your best antivirus decision.

If you like this article, please check out my others.