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Good Free Anti-Virus?

Myself980Myself980 Registered User regular
edited July 2008 in Games and Technology
I've used AVG for about 2 years now, and it has been good, but 8.0 is terrible. An absolute resource hog, and slow as well. It shouldn't take 4 hours to scan ~390 gigs, especially since 7.5 only took about 1.5 hours.

Do any of you have any suggestions for a good free alternative? I'm looking at Avast! and ClamAV, although they have their drawbacks. Anything I'm ignoring/overlooking? Warnings?

Bad command or cheese. Abort/Retry/French?
Myself980 on

Posts

  • darleysamdarleysam On my way to UKRegistered User regular
    edited July 2008
    I use Avast, but I'd be interested to hear what the drawbacks are for that.

    darleysam on
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  • FeralFeral ＭＥＭＥＴＩＣＨＡＲＩＺＡＲＤ interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited July 2008
    I've been using Avira and it seems pretty small footprint and low-bullshit. I like it.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • NitsuaNitsua South CarolinaRegistered User regular
    edited July 2008
    I use Avast as well. I'd like to hear of these drawbacks you speak of.

    Nitsua on
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  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Avast or Linux.

    Zilla360 on
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  • Myself980Myself980 Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    It's not that much of a drawback. Just the registration. I just really hate pop-ups demanding information so programs keep working. ClamAV hasn't tested well, although users relate different stories.

    Myself980 on
    Bad command or cheese. Abort/Retry/French?
  • darleysamdarleysam On my way to UKRegistered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Myself980 wrote: »
    It's not that much of a drawback. Just the registration. I just really hate pop-ups demanding information so programs keep working. ClamAV hasn't tested well, although users relate different stories.

    It's just once a year. You go to the Avast site, re-register your details (just name, address, email address stuff) and you get a code. You then put that code into Avast and you're good to go. And I've never received a single piece of advertising or spam from them.

    darleysam on
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  • Myself980Myself980 Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Good to hear.

    Myself980 on
    Bad command or cheese. Abort/Retry/French?
  • Lord JezoLord Jezo Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    I use Antivir, it was ranked highest in detection ratings over a couple of the other free guys.

    http://www.free-av.com/

    But really, all of the major free ones that people use are execrable, they will all be fine, I switched to this one because 0.2% more excited me a little bit.

    AntiVirus Detection Rate Thread :
    http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=76&threadid=2047460&enterthread=y

    Detection comparison:
    http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.chip.de%2F0-security-blog%2Fsecurity-suiten-2008-im-test-q12008-20080122%2F&langpair=de|en&hl=en&ie=UTF8

    Lord Jezo on
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  • XagarathXagarath Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Antivir's served me well enogh, annoying notification window aside.

    Xagarath on
  • Recoil42Recoil42 Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    I've been using Avira for a while, since someone recommended it to me on this forum. It's definitely far better for me than Avast and AVG ever were. Lighter footprint, saner GUI, does better in magazine/laboratory tests.

    Definitely the best of the free AV proggys.
    Xagarath wrote: »
    Antivir's served me well enogh, annoying notification window aside.

    You can disable it quite easily, with about a ten second hack. Just google "avira disable", you'll find it.

    Recoil42 on
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  • FeralFeral ＭＥＭＥＴＩＣＨＡＲＩＺＡＲＤ interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited July 2008
    It's also significantly less annoying than Norton's gigantic bright yellow "I just wiped my own ass, kthxbye" notifications.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Yeah, a happy Antivir user here as well :)

    Impersonator on
  • Myself980Myself980 Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    Feral wrote: »
    It's also significantly less annoying than Norton's gigantic bright yellow "I just wiped my own ass, kthxbye" notifications.

    I think pretty much all anti-virus programs are less annoying than Norton, even the ones filled with Trojans.

    Decided to use Avast! So far, so good, with roughly an hour and a half for scanning all my drives.
    Nice interface, although the voice is a bit creepy.

    Thanks for the recommendations.

    Myself980 on
    Bad command or cheese. Abort/Retry/French?
  • DixonDixon Screwed...possibly doomed CanadaRegistered User regular
    edited July 2008
    pfftt anti-virus, I don't use any personally but a lot of my friends use that AVG they have complained about it yet so that some merit to it's case. I'll have to see what this antivir so many of you talk about is like though.

    Dixon on
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