No money to buy McAfee Antivirus Software (which I believe is the most famous one)? No money to buy Norton Antivirus from Symantec (which I believe is the second most famous)? So, I guess you're just like me - looking for free anti-virus software and you wonder is there really the free one? If really free one, you may wonder is it reliable?
So I did a little survey on anti-virus to download all the anti-virus software. What am I exactly looking for anti-virus? After some thoughts, I realized what I really want from you the latest virus thread detection. The anti-virus software must be able to detect the latest virus thread as soon as possible. The problem is NONE of the anti-virus software can provide that.
I was still remember when I had Norton Antivirsus and McAfee Antivirus installed on the same computer. The point is both of them caught a different virus on my PC. One able to detect the virus and the other can't and vice-versa. Try to find the latest virus database from Norton and McAfee, I bet you will see the different results. It concluded that I need to have at least 2 anti-virus software install on my PC.
But the problem is the cost, I can't even afford to pay for 1 single anti-virus software. So what I exactly want to look for is 2 free anti-virus software to give me the full protection of my PC just to be safe. At last, I found 2, AVG and AVAST.
Here are the comparison and my comments between these 2 anti-virus program:
| Free Anti-Virus Program | AVG | AVAST |
| Company Website | ||
| User Friendly | Yes. Very simple UI and understood by even for beginner | Not really but I take me sometimes to figure out some of the features. Honestly, the UI really screw up. |
| Catch More Virus (based on my personal experience) | No, catch less than AVAST | Yes, catch more than AVG |
| Virus Detection Efficiency (I created a fake virus file) | Detected very fast once the file virus is accessed | Detected very fast once the file virus is accessed. |
| Virus Recovery Database | No | Yes, but I’ve never tested this features since my PC is free of virus until at least today. I think this is really a cool feature if it able to recover to the fee-virus state. |
| Other general anti-virus program features | Nothing special, very similar. | Nothing special, very similar. |
| Competitive Analysis (Compared the McAfee as the base in my other PC) | Yes, all viruses detected by McAfee can be detected by AVG. | All viruses detected by McAfee can be detected by AVAST. Strangely, I have experienced that some viruses are detected by AVAST but not in McAfee. Does this mean AVAST is better than McAfee? I do not dare to say. |
| CNET Reviews | None | 5 Stars |
| CNET User Rating | 4 Stars | 4.5 Stars |
| Installation | Very Easy | A little bit troublesome. It requires you to register and request a license. I personally don’t like this. |
| My Recommendation | Yes (Better to run both on the system) | Yes (Better to run both on the system |
Click here to download AVG
Click here to download AVAST
6 Comments:
Hi there,
From those two anti-virus software, which one do you think has less resource usage? Sometimes my laptop may start slow due to high resource consumption during the anti-virus loading.
I think the AVG uses less memory resources than the AVAST. If the memory consumption really is the concern, I would suggest to use AVG instead.
However, both AVs do not consume a lot of memory. AVAST consumes ~5M bytes and AVG consumes ~600K bytes. Perhaps this is also one of the advantages over famous anti-virus software(e.g. McAfee and Norton). Kudos again to AVG and AVAST.:)
Cool... I am using AVG. I don't know there is AVAST until now. ;)
I have used AVG once and did not like it so much for reasons I dont remember. But since I have been using AVAST, I never had a single attack so far (may be contributed by the fact that I also use Zone Alarm firewall with it). But the fact that I get a Virus update every now and then make me feel very comfortable using AVAST. And registering once in 14 months is really worth it.
Why to struggle with not so famous antivirus when we get Norton Mini version? Download Free Norton Internet Security 2007 Mini Version : Norton Security Scan with Google Pack
Now Norton Anti-Virus is part of the Google Pack? What is the limitation in this mini version? Is it completely free? Maybe I will give it a try and write a review on it.
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