well i'll say that the author of this thread has made a pretty wise narrow down to two AV packages.: Kaspersky and bitdefender.
i have tried many AV packages over the yrs.. till date.....AVG, avast, norton, bitdefender,kaspersky,zonealarm.
in decreasing order of my preference.
bitdefender=kaspersky
zonealarm=norton
avast
avg
if you want to go with a free package then avast would be a good choice.
but in comparison with paid AV packages they are far behind.
someone said in this forum "dont buy Quickheal even if you get it free" is totally valid.
well i 've rated zonealarm=norton , but there's a huge diff bet the two....as zonealarm requires lots of user interaction and highly configurable while noton is no nonsense no interaction (less configurable), but the over all performance in detecting and treating visures and trojans and all is equal. and both perform pretty well....only jus that noton takes up much more of RAM as compared to others.
till date kaspersky and bit defender were the best in performance very less system load. one major advantage of kaspersky is very frequent updates almost every 2 hrs. which is really commendable. because a new virus(based on new algorithm) on the block will be detected only using the heuristic capabilities of the AV suite....with frequent updates, the AV package knows of the new virus in advance ....
i'll recomend using a complete suite having antivirus and a firewall....because using an antivirus and firewall and maybe spyware separately is jus adding on to the load of the system in terms of RAM.
and also disable the windows firewall if you plan to use another firewall.
never install two antivirus or 2 firewall in the system....it will slow down the system and take up lots of processing and memory resources.
well i must thank s18000RPM for informing me abt the uninstalling problem in kaspersky.....never uninstalled it since installing ..... have only been installing it jusa fter a format....lol.
hope this info helps you...
