What Exactly Does your Cash Buy Anyway - Free Antivirus

What Exactly Does your Cash Buy Anyway - Free Antivirus Protection

Of course, if you think of free antivirus protection, you think of AVG if you want to go outside the family; or you think Microsoft's Security Essentials if you want to think local. If you want to cut down on the cost of your computer build by $50 or so a year, doing it with your choice of antivirus, is a great way to go. But there is so much choice out there, some would say even more choice than you would if you were looking to pay money for your antivirus needs. The best free antivirus protection out there can be basically indistinguishable from the paid ones in most areas that count. So what do you think could be missing?

The first thing to go in a free program is support. If you have trouble installing it, or with determining what to do if it says that it is unable to remove something, who do you call? With free software, you call your geek friend, if you are lucky enough to have one. But there are a few enterprises out there that do give you limited e-mail or forum support. Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials for example give you free e-mail support; AVG does give you the option to use their toll number to call support. Just one small catch there though, it costs $50 a call - which is more than you would pay for the program itself. But maybe limited or no support is no real deterrent; usually, for the reasonably educated user, very little goes wrong that they would actually need help with. And if they do, they can always go to an online forum and ask.

The other thing with free antivirus protection is the question whether it updates itself as regularly as the paid version. As a general rule, the free ones don't check with the update server as often as the paid ones. If you do happen to have the bad luck to come upon one of the newest viruses out there in between updates, you would be in trouble. But no one actually has that kind of spectacular bad luck, that the newest virus out there should get to you in the one day it takes your antivirus to update itself. But here too, the free ones are all caught up; Microsoft Security Essentials, if it is not up-to-date, and still comes across something it finds suspicious, will get online to check it out. Panda antivirus will do the same. Paid ones will give you some extra computer scanning features, and will look out for you on your chat client too; and of course there is always the benefit that you don't get the annoying "Do you want to install the Ask Toolbar" option, when you install. But really, this is just quibbling and splitting hairs. You get to save about $50 every year, using free antivirus protection, and that is not a bad deal. If you choose Microsoft Security Essentials, it might be even a better deal.

What do I think is the best free antivirus protection out there? The word to the street today is that Avira Antivir Personal is the real winner. Its malware protection is second to none, it is fast in its scanning, and it doesn't seem to slow down the computer as much. But it can be a bit tedious the way its user interface is designed. And the same goes for Avast. These days AVG is particularly popular, but the protection does seem a little off. Microsoft Security Essentials is really good too. The Panda Cloud antivirus does need a closer look; it uses a new approach entirely, going online every single time to search for virus definitions on its servers. But this is kind of a new approach, and one needs a little more time to understand it properly. Free antivirus protection has really come of age now; if you ask me, you really can put your money away now.