Time for renewal for me... Is the one u purchase any different than the ones you can download for free?


If so any suggestions for any good programs?

i've had a lot of luck with kaspersky but it's pretty expensive, you can find a pirated version but they keep a tight lock on that stuff so you wont have it long.

in my personal opinion it's better then any thing else on the market but that really depends on what your doing, the viruses that your in risk of and such, it's kinda subjective......

avast is free and it works great for me

well MOST of the ones you can get for free are trial versions (they are limited).i suggest AVG,you can still get the free full version

Avg is very good, i have it.

AVG

Avast! is a VERY good anti-virus prgram that is also free. The only catch is that you have to register in order to be able to use it. Not only that, you have to register again yearly to continue to be able to obtain updates for it.

I've heard good things about Comodo Anti-Virus as well- not only is it free, but there's no registration nonsense involved with using it, either. Of course, it's still technically in Beta, so this is something to consider before downloading it.

As far as anti-spyware programs, Spybot Search and Destroy is one of the best freeware seekers out there. Be sure to get the v1.52 version though, as the previous one had some bugs.

Spywareblaster, A-Squared Free, Threatfire, and SUPERAntispyware are also viable anti-spyware alternatives to consider.

I currently urse Norton, have used avg and avast. I like norton for its completeness, but hate the way it wraps its fingers around your os's throat and is nearly impossible to get rid of. I don't know about microsofts system, does anyone have any information on it?

i avast. i really like it.

Thank you

Spyware - Spybot S&D. Use the resident shield on Windows machines. If Firefox is workable for you, between the two you should have little worries.

AV - As several folks point out - AVG, and Avast are very good for this. Comodo is good as well, but would pick one of the first two.

For those needing high volume scanning and such - ClamAV and Kasprsky are the two heavy weights there - such as SMTP servers. Run both and you pretty much have about the best you will get.

ClamAV rocks for nix machines!

When deciding which anti-virus software to buy, this is a good site to check out first. http://www.av-comparatives.org/

They have a comparative test of most of the major/best AVs.

Free: According to the site I linked to, Avira Antivir misses only %0.4 of over 1.5 million types of viruses. However, it does have some drawbacks like false positives, and a prompt to buy the premium version when updating.

Pay: Eset NOD32 and Kaspersky are the two best, pay or free, IMO. In the last retrospective/proactive test, NOD32 had no false positives, yet it still caught 71% of malware that was yet to be discovered based on it's virus definitions (heuristics). Kaspersky managed 41% with a few false positives.

avast and re registering is not that hard.