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Thread: Free Anti-Virus software...do you get what you pay for?

  1. #1
    Old Fart
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    Question Free Anti-Virus software...do you get what you pay for?

    I have been using a free AV for almost 3 years now. It is called AVG and is available as a free download from www.grisoft.com . The updates are also free. It has been very effective when kept up to date in my experience, and in some cases has found things that Nortons and MacAfee have missed. AVG uses an interesting feature that it calls 'Hueristic Scanning', where it looks at code for certain criteria that applies to most virii, supposedly giving it the ability to detect virii that are not in its database. I am curious as to if any other AO menbers have used this product, or any other free AVs for that matter, and what their thoughts and impressions are. Any takers?
    Al
    It isn't paranoia when you KNOW they're out to get you...

  2. #2
    Purveyor of Lather Syini666's Avatar
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    Ive been using AVG for a year and a half now, and its worked great for me. Its snagged many email worms and viri, and even found some old crusty viri on stuff I transferd to my compuer across my lan. It scans nightly, and updates once a week. As far as AV goes, im pretty pleased with AVG's performance.
    You're not your post count, You're not your avatar or sig, You're not how fast your internet connection is, You are not your processor, hard drive, or graphics card. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of AO
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  3. #3
    Senior Member
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    I have installed AVG on my parents machine. It has worked great for them updates by itself and detects all virii.

    Free can be good its about making the right decision

  4. #4
    Senior Member cwk9's Avatar
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    AVG kicks ass. If you planning to shell out money for a virus scanner you should a least try AVG first.
    Its not software piracy. I’m just making multiple off site backups.

  5. #5
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    I had used a free antivirus before. It was called PE antivirus or something in that style (old gozilla versions made advert for it) but it was too bad (bad virus definition list).
    Now I'm using KAV but as it crashs my Windows I think I will try AVG.
    Life is boring. Play NetHack... --more--

  6. #6
    I too am another happy AVG user. I run it on my wifes' XP Pro box and it's never let us down...

  7. #7
    Senior Member
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    inoculate PE kisscool??

    i got avg and it was full of adware, and popups, and im sure u get heuristic scanning techiques in most AV scanners. but i do love Trojan first aid kit which is free and works well


    Preep
    http://www.attrition.org/gallery/computing/forum/tn/youarenot.gif.html

  8. #8
    Old Fart
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    Adware?

    Originally posted here by preep
    inoculate PE kisscool??

    i got avg and it was full of adware, and popups, and im sure u get heuristic scanning techiques in most AV scanners. but i do love Trojan first aid kit which is free and works well


    Preep
    I've yet to see the first pop-up generated by AVG, so this is news to me. I've run both AdAware and SpybotSearch&Destroy, neither of which detected any adware associated with AVG. I could well be wrong here, but I suspect the ads came from something else other than AVG.
    Al
    It isn't paranoia when you KNOW they're out to get you...

  9. #9
    Senior Member
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    hi

    for my sole windows box i have a free AV called free AV (free-av.com). i don't know if its the same as the one you guys are using, but its not too bad. when i had used it for work purposes (i should register them one day) it found klez and elkerns that NAV and McAfee had missed. it doesn't appear to take up that much of windows' resources either.

    regards,
    mark.
    \'hi, welcome to *****. if you would like to speak to an operator, please hang up now.\'
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  10. #10
    Senior Member
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    I have to concur AVG is a great free virus scanner Ive used it now for quite some time and like it better than Mcfee or Norton. It is easy to set up and can be set to automaticlly run or download updates. So far its found one virus in my daughters email before she had a chance to open it.
    No good deed goes unpunished.

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