Jaxbar

Have looked through some of the old threads but thought I may need the most up to date info.

My Norton Anti Virus is due to come to an end and I'm a bit skint to pay the 50 dollars or so renewal.

Is there a safe and reliable free Anti virus out there? Since running stuff like Azureus am a bit paranoid in case they may make me more open to viruses.

Any ideas appreciated

Bob

www.filehippo.com

I'd say get Avast because it's good, checks your IM clients and P2P stuff...it's also not a resource got, doesn't look naff like AVG, and also quicker to scan...have to register it, but that's free, name and email.

And while at the site, if you are doing the torrents, get the Peerguardian as well.

Philgr

I use AVG from Grisoft at home - I've not had any trouble with it.

You can download the free version here

Philgr

Form over function Bob? You'll be buying a Mac next

fatbrit

What's up with Peerguardian at the mo, Bob? The updated block lists are empty!

Jaxbar

Thanks all, now I am spoilt for choice! what does Peer Guardian do Bob?

Bob

It works, but it's a massive system resource hog compared to Avast...

Bob

Mine aren't...sometimes it happens that when it gets corrupted update, that they get knackered, you just delete the list files from the prog directory and it thinks it is a fresh install and gets them again...

oh, and if you use uTorrent, you'll be stuffed, somin' to do with the backend of the source being licensed to another company that is anti p2p related, but not being used for anti p2p uses, so you might have issues, i think they have a work around by re-routing you to use the bluetack IP blocklist until they sort themselves out...

Bob

It blocks nasties from looking at your IP such as RIAA, MPAA, all the people that you don't want to know who your connecting to, especially if your in the US, because they'll eventually get you otherwise...well in a gist

oh, and I wouldn't know anything about that...honest...

fatbrit

Yep -- that was the problem! Working now. Thx! I actually moved to Azareus when I noticed my problem with Peerguardian. still don't like it -- it's bloated!!! Might stay, though, till I see what's happening on the Utorrent front.

Bob

you should check the uTorrent beta from the hippo site because there's a lot of improvements to the release version, but I don't like uT that much because when you have more than say 3-5 files, the resources jump a lot, so might as well stick with aZ...plus I've got it all nicely configured *lol*...but yeah, uT, the beta's are a lot better, especially with encrypted files and the like..

Rushman

Does this thread come with a free translation into English!!!!

FFS

TRPardoe

I detest Norton's AV product and have used McAfee for ages now.

My Comcast High Speed service now provides McAfee for free. See if you own broadband service does something similar.

Computer Shopper magazine just rated various AV programs - F-secure came out higher rated than McAfee at $49.95 for the boxed version. McAfee was rated a little higher than Norton.

The highest rated was ZoneAlarm (best known for it's free firewall) Suite 6 which costs $69.95 boxed. That's less than 20 cents a day.

The online version of McAfee is only $35 a year.

I don't think that the price you pay for a good AV program is much considering the costly results of a bad infestation.

You can download a free trial of PC Tools Antivirus HERE

Dan725

I'm using and have used Antivir http://www.free-av.com/ for quite some time now. Tried Avast and some others, but IMHO Antivir is the one that is the least intrusive, seems to catcha lot of stuff and is updated 3-4 times a day.

Amazing all these free av programs seem to blow away the stuff you pay top dollar for. Couldn't stand Norton/Symantec - we have it at work, grinding about on your hard disk all day slowing your computer down, total crap.

Bob

If you ain't naughty, your all set...