Well Undies, I am up for it

The Norton ( McAfee, etc.) provides reliable updates
All AV manufacturers do that, or they would go out of business. Actually Norton have the worst record for updates that cause problems, even their auto-update mechanism has done this .......twice in the last year!

It provides an unmatched support
By and large anything you pay for gets better support than a free version. Remember that the guys who give free AV also do pay for versions. If it is a bug or a new virus, the support will be identical...........you are doing User Acceptance Testing for free?

Moreover it has got its benchmark in the AntiVirus business
Totally irrelevant. An AV product is as good as its last scan, its last update, and the last malware it detected. Benchmarks are HISTORY, the battle against malware is NOW.

This means for a sustantially serious work going on in the field, these products are a prerequisite.
Errr, you don't read EULAs do you...............the free stuff is for private home use. Business, government and education HAVE to pay, or the software is being used illegally From a fuctionality viewpoint it is effectively identical apart from the network/corporate bells and whistles.

but he can't get that peace of mind as he would by purchasing these products.
Rubbish! that is not peace of mind, it is "a false sense of security". Just because you pay for something does not make it work any better. In most cases the difference between the free product and the commercial one is in its support of networks and centralised management in a corporate environment. What does a home user want with that?

Moreover an average guy doing his job on the Comp. does not bother ablout the types of viruses rendering in the background. For him its just another mosquito repeller, which is supposed to prevent his malaria.
That is very typical of a work environment..............actually the guy believes that it is his IT Department's job, so does not give it a second thought. If you don't believe me, ask any 12 people who work in a sizeable corporate environment (NOT in IT!) what AV is running on their desktop................

I think you have confused the general direction of the thread..............as we are talking "free" product as an option, it is obviously a home/private scenario, not a commercial/institutional one.


The whole rationale behind this "free" software is that it is a marketing strategy, several of the players prefer dealing with corporate accounts, and give away the private version to get market exposure.

just my £0.02