technology Help me decide on a free antivirus

[Fleur-De-Lis 350]

My thoughts are either on Avast Antivirus, or Bitdefender free edition. Please cast your poll in the vote and do feel free to offer a comment or explanation on as to why you would prefer that one, as it will help me come to a decision.

 

I would like to mention the laptop will primarily be used for work related purposes, however as gaming is my primary form of entertainment I will need an antivirus that will be video game friendly (which Avast and Bitdefender seem to boast.)

 

I tried putting Bitdefender free edition on my dad's laptop, it didn't work out as well as I would have liked since the "Login" button never worked. It always ended up as an empty white window that never loaded or showed the fields to login. Though apparently my brother in law uses the free edition of Bitdefender just fine on 3+ different computers. But because of my experience with it I am now skeptical of it.

 

I have been using Avast antivirus for a good many years, its like o'l reliable to me at this point, however it bothers me that they keep trying to upsell various products to you these days. It is very annoying. Due to budget constraints I am limiting to free edition (Though if anyone is feeling generous I wont say no to a gift hahaha!

 

Question:

As a serious question to people who have subscribed to the premium versions of Avast though. I would like to ask, just what are their real pricing anyways? As a long time user I have noticed long ago that they always say "on sale" or "special black Friday price" and such. However the price itself is always the same thing, a crossed out larger number with a smaller one being the real price. For example "Internet Security" version says $49.99 $29.99 So how does that really work? that is the first time buyer price and then its $49.99 a year? ... also the costs themselves are yearly? Why cant they just give it to use straight instead of these stupid and highly annoying obfisticated business practices.

[simba86 1,541]

I have tried avast, AVG , panda, and avira and it is a tie between avast and avira, i like avira the most because it found a trojan that all the others missed.

I use a McAfee subscription as my main antivirus though and it is better than any free version of anything i have tried because of the active firewall and safe browsing that keeps me from going to malware filled sites, I also use the free version of malwarebytes to help clean up what mcafee might miss

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,627]

 I use AVG and it seems to work like a treat. I use it in combination with Malwarebytes, I highly recommend both of those. 

[simba86 1,541]

 I use AVG and it seems to work like a treat. I use it in combination with Malwarebytes, I highly recommend both of those. 

i love malwarebytes to, it found some kind of brower hijacker or something that was embeded in my recycle bin files, mcafee missed it, malwarebytes should be used WITH an antivirus though, that way each one catches what the other might miss,

 

anyway here is a list of the best free antivirus scanners of 2016

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388652,00.asp

[Guest]

I prefer Avast. I used to be an AVG guy, but the later versions started to be rather slow.

[Planty 1,053]

The free Microsoft Windows defender is the best overall and th one I would have on all the time in the background!

 

 

Malwearbytes if you get something!

 

 

Source: I work in IT support for my uni

[Jokuc 8,174]

As for free anti-virus programs I'd say Avast! even though they have the annoying ads. From my experience it's really straightforward and has pretty good detection. Sometimes it has some problems with actually deleting the infections it finds but if you're good with computers you should be able to deal with that manually. I actually haven't tried Bitdefender Free so I can't really say anything about it. As for paid softwares I strongly recommend Kaspersky, I got it for free during one year when I bought my laptop and it easily kills everything you throw at it. As suggested above I also recommend Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware for monthly malware scans. About AVG, I hate it. It's the most annoying anti-virus software in the world right after McAffcrapee. It slows down your system, leaves its stupid trash files all over the place, never fixes the pointers to its old dll files in the registry after updates, refuses to be properly uninstalled and advertises the good features in the free version but when you actually press them they're behind a pay-wall. I haven't used AVG in years though so I don't really know about the 2016 version.