Which Antivirus ?

[colinicky]

Well it's time to either renew or change my Antivirus software & my internet security. Unfortunately Sky only give you 1 year of macafee free & as I didn't use it when I started with them my year is nearly gone any way !
Have been using Norton because it came on my laptop & I conned the shop out of another copy as well but with 4 pc's all connected to the net it's going to get expensive
So any suggestions ? what good ,bad or don't touch it with a barge pole !
TIA

[Peter M]

AVG by Grisoft does for me

[jptaylor9]

Check with your bank, mine provides McAfee for free to it's customers.

[Rod]

AVG for me too.

[colinicky]

Originally Posted by jptaylor9

Check with your bank, mine provides McAfee for free to it's customers.

Which bank OOI?

[jptaylor9]

Originally Posted by colinicky

Which bank OOI?

Royal Bank of Scotland

[David P]

AVG Free does it for me. It's hard to find on the AVG site - best Google it directly.

[Druid]

Another vote forAVG Free.

Good luck with uninstalling Norton

[copperband]

Yet another AVG vote

[Lazlo]

I always used Norton in the past, but it's rather large footprint finally forced me to change. Now I've been giving Kaspersky Internet Security a go.

Upsides:

- It boots up really fast, checks the internet for updates every hour, not that you'd notice and you can change that if you want.
- The entire program folder is only 18Mb, which is a pleasant change from Norton.
- It came top of a PC Pro test last December. Here's the link, but bear in mind the comment about a Vista bug. It doesn't bother me because my new PC has XP . AVG came 10th, out of 12.
- I got mine for £17 from dabs.com - PC Hardware, Components, Software, Digital Cameras, MP3 Players which was a real bargain, but I see it's now up to £27. Note that the 3 user copy is "only" £37. You can actually buy direct from the Kaspersky site where it's £18 for 1 user and £36 for 5 users.

Downsides:

- It's not free, which I know counts it out for many people. I've never tried AVG so I can't comment. I imagine you'll probably want some firewall software as well.
- While the main interface is very user friendly, so you can start scans, check on threat reports etc very easily, some of the deeper menus are a bit fiddly. A little harder to customise than Norton I'd say, but not by much.
- It comes with a component called Proactive Defence, which is really good at detecting "suspicious" activities. The reason I put this down as a downside is that it really got on my nerves as it's almost too suspicious. A bit like having Vista's incessant warnings, multiplied by 10. It's an optional component however, so I ended up uninstalling it. The other option was patience - each warning was an opportunity to teach it something, and if I'd have just put up with for a few more weeks, maybe the warnings would have become bearable. Maybe.

Overall, I'm happy with it.