Avast! Antivirus Home Edition 4.1

[Plarkster]

how about AVG?

AVG is pretty good and in my opinion used to be the best free antivirus, but has recently fallen behind Avast as Alwil did a great job with Avast 4.1. Grisoft still stick with version 6 of AVG as their free version, even though their pro version is up to version 7 now.

Basically, AVG is a little lighter on resources but Avast has better detection rates - I'd rather have better protection so I use Avast now. The performance hit is barely more than AVG anyway.

[bazcook]

I used AVG6 Free since January when I ripped Norton AV by the roots. NAV more trouble than it was worth and I resent having to pay over and over again for a 'subscription' to software I've already bought.

Granted, AVG's engine could use a freshening up and I had to tweak the Update Manager to give me more access to active download sites, but I've not had any problems with it. As a belt-and-suspenders move I also do a once monthly online AV scan (as I did with Norton) and found no surprises there either.