i too used to use McAfee from comcast, but it took forever to load, and was a huge resource hog, now i use AVG, windows vista firewall, and defender, and have yet to have any problems at all, i did buy avg,(thats becuase of my paranoia LOL) but i used the free version for quite a while before i purchased it, with no complaints at all

There are some interesting developments in the Norton camp. They have just released beta versions of their 2009 products and they are free to try for a period. Go here if you are interested WWW Link. The size the program has been vastly reduced - from 300mb in 2006 to 100mb in 2009 plus over 300 speed and performance tweaks. Initial reaction from many testers is very, very positive indeed. At last, I think Symantec have decided to listen to the masses. This could be a huge leap forward. I've been a frustrated NIS user for years and now it looks like Symantec may be turning the clock back to 2002 when their programs were lean and damn good   

I got tired of the free programs. It's like shooting craps. Since I have Comcast I went with McAfee and it's been great.

k to give you a different take, i don't use AV software!

all it seems to do is give false positives and eat cpu.

instead i use the following:

a router. this stops a lot of random stuff cos it just doesn't get though.

XP firewall. don't know if this does anything on top of the router but it don't bug me so i don't bug it.

firefox with the noscript add-on. this means i have to actively agree to run java script on my PC. it's a bit annoying for others when they use my comp but i'm used to it and it's no sweat.

spybot S&D (free) i run this once a week to clear the little bits that get though. also this as an extra tool that notifies me when there's a change to the registry. again if i don't agree, it doesn't get in.

malwarebytes anti-malware (free). again i run this once a week, it does them same thing as spybot but get's a few other things.

ccleaner (free). this runs on boot up. clears my temp folders. not really for virus's but still a good tool. it can also scan the registry and clean it up.

and for the neighsayers i've checked my pc over with norton, avg and bitdefender. not a peep from them except eating all my cpu (looking at you BD).

hope that's usefull

MrL

Hmmm, my BD which you are looking at (Voyeur!!) is using 856k memory and it doesnt touch my cpu.
So what happens if spybot and malware bytes misses a few things? Whos not to say a virus might sneak up on you.
I wouldnt advise to go without an AV program though. Free one is better than none.

I have been using Avast and thought it caught a whole lot of things till 2 days ago. Some how it let one through on my XP PC.
Its my kids computer so not sure what happened. I have a program that checks what websites they are on and nothing odd on it. Had to crash the PC and start from new.

Avg let one in about a year ago.
 
I decided to try Live One Care.

It has anti Virus and Firewall built into it. It also fixed a problem with my other Vista computers to connect to a printer on Xp.

Live One Care has a 90day trial. I am not sure how good it is though. I will let you know.  

 

I can highly recommend Avira.

 

https://www.avira.com/en/index

 

• FREE Version is very good
• PAID version is very cheap
• State of the art detection and protection rating - http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php
• Modest on hardware ressources..... barely noticable even on older systems
• Highly configurable..... you can setup in detail how the programm should run and how it treats your security needs. Never again worry about to many alerts or to low security.
• Hard to kill. With proper settings the programm withstands most attempts of hostile termination. If you enable password protection, even the settings are protected.
• Rock stable: I run the paid version for 5 years... the free versions for over 8 years.... NEVER EVER the programm caused a problem.
• Free Version does only display one - Avira - add banner while updating....no other annoying stuff.
• Very fast scanner with multicore support.
• Developed in Germany..... significantly lower change of NSA backdoor.

 

 

I can highly recommend stop spamming in necro threads.  Thank you for this discussion.

spam/spammer removed...

Problem is that if sombody post in such a topic that it appears under recent posts for me.

 

Yes, agree.  I do basically the same thing.  One addition, its a pain, but not as bad as reinstalling my OS:  I switch, temporally, to another antivirus and run it, do as recommended, and that turn by standard antivirus back on. 

In my experience both the free versions of AVG and Avast are garbage.

They both missed a virus that Norton and Kaspersky caught. You get what you pay for...

As far as Norton being bloatware... Starting with the 2012 version, the program's footprint has been reduced significantly. I've never experienced a slowdown from it.

Also, since I've been using Norton, I've never been infected. Not once.

Same goes for Kaspersky.