Good Free Virus or Anti-Malware Software

People are forever asking me: What is the best virus software? Best wireless router? Best accounting software? Best computer. Best this. Best that.

There is no best anything. Best is relative to your needs, your budget, your nous, you technical skills and in the end it all boils down to some sort of experience. Mine. Yours. Your friend’s. The collective wisdom of a crowd of strangers.

You can pay a little or a lot or zero money for software that does what it is supposed to do. The question is whether the software is going to do it well. But more importantly no matter how much money you pay you can’t get away from spending some time. It takes time to research and if you get something that is crappy or hard to use or doesn’t really do the job you want it to do you’ll spend a lot of time stuffing around with it.

So this is my current experience. Maybe it will save you some time and some money.

Over the course of many years…let’s say since 2003 when I had my first devasting experience with a virus…I’ve used all of the following virus and firewall and anti-malware software.

• Norton
• McAfee
• Bit Defender
• PC Tools
• AVG

When I say I’ve used I mean I’ve paid a subscription, installed and used for at least one subscription period or longer on at least three PC’s more. I’ve also helped many small business and friends and family install and use these products.

For years and before virus software came bundled with firewall software I used ZoneAlarm’s free firewall.

I ditched Norton, McAfee, Bit Defender and PC Tools because they all became too bloated. They take up too much computer resource to update or to run. And when my husband threatens to throw his notebook computer out the window every time it appears to come to a screaming halt (caused by virus software updates) then I know it is time to ditch.

I used AVG early in it’s historical life. I was always suspicious of it and in the end it let viruses slip through that at the time it simply shouldn’t have. Once burned twice shy so I never tried the paid version.

Last year I paid (by way of Trial Pay and this is not a recommendation) for a one-year subscription to Zone Alarm’s bundled version of virus and internet security software. After a good year’s run with it, I recently renewed my subscription, upgrading to their eXtreme Security product. But whoa! Every time I wanted to download something using Firefox it spit the dummy, produced an error message about being unstable, shut down my Firefox (which really pissed me off since I usually had at least 8 windows open). After a week (hoping that an update would fix the problem) I reported the problem to Zone Alarm (via online chat). I seemed to be the only person in the world who had this problem.

I asked for my money back (and they promptly refunded). Then after swearing that this is all a racket anyway (really isn’t someone out there getting paid to write viruses?) I also swore never again to pay good money for malware protection and I started my search for a money-free good reliable product.

Security Software That I Am Currently Using

Here’s what I am using (so far)…

Microsoft’s Totally Free Security Essentials

After dreadful experiences with Microsoft’s Defender firewall, I would normally stay away from any virus protection Microsoft offered. But I decided to try Security Essentials after my husband put a rave review under my nose. And I really like it. It is quiet and unobtrusive, efficient and best of all it works very very well on low configured XP machines. I’ve only been using it for two months but so far so good.

PC Tools Threatfire

I am also using PC Tools Threatfire (the free version) as an added measure because I rarely do a complete system scan and I like the concept of the behaviour-based real-time prevention (compared to other virus protection that relies on prior knowledge of virus patterns and necessitates regular updates). On Vista (with 3GB of ram) this extra protection doesn’t seem to impact on resources. I would be wary doubling up like this on an XP machine.

Ad-Aware

In addition to virus software, one needs occasionally to scan for spyware culprits. The alternative Spyware Doctor seems to do a good job but it isn’t free and it is resource hungry. I definitely would not let it run all the time.

Ad-aware was the only malware software that found a dormant key-logger on my PC. None of the virus scanners paid or free discovered it. I don’t let Ad-aware run all the time because there is a noticeable impact on system resources. I fire it up for a complete system scan about once a month.

The Final Measure

I have two final measures of good security (virus, firewall, malware detection) software. It is whether or not my 72-year old Mother can easily use it on her 6 year-old Toshiba laptop (XP 500MB of memory) without degradation in performance and whether my 70-year old Aunt using it on her 4 year-old Dell desktop can go at least 6 months without getting a virus.

I will report back.