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Anti Virus Software Advice


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My Mcafee free trial has recently expired on my new laptop and I was thinking of purchasing protection. Is Mcafee decent enough for a laptop for general home use? Surfing, shopping and occasional streaming.  Are there any decent free ones that do the job or are you better off forking out for a full package?

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8 hours ago, The Equalizer said:

My Mcafee free trial has recently expired on my new laptop and I was thinking of purchasing protection. Is Mcafee decent enough for a laptop for general home use? Surfing, shopping and occasional streaming.  Are there any decent free ones that do the job or are you better off forking out for a full package?

I just use the free microsoft thing, never had any trouble. Bought Norton once and it was shite, slowed everything right down.

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12 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

you should never need to pay for a decent anti virus, i have avast free and its more than fine

Thats kind of true. Some of the paid ones, though, can come with more features and, more importantly for me, less intrusion. Having said that, the only feature I really use is the ability to install on several PCs (ie the kids ones) and manage centrally.

I found the free ones pop up too often. Ive just switched to Webroot which is relatively inexpensive, really lightweight and fast and runs in the background with basically no prompts

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have used Kaspersky anti-virus for over a decade. I feel that a paid subscription offers far more protection than a free version, and for less than a tenner a year I find it great value.

People trying to save a few quid could lose more than the price of a trusted anti-virus that have better resources in building data bases and critical updates before the free versions.

I have had to do massive clean ups from free anti-viruses on peoples comp equipment that did not detect malware at the time it was installed, another feature most paid subscriptions are ahead with by neutralising the threat before an install.

 

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25 minutes ago, NorthernLights said:

Its an interesting argument and with browser devs adding more and more security checks its quite a strong one.

I guess it comes down to whether or not Defender has more or less bugs and potential exploits than 3rd party AVs introduce.

Cant say Im hugely convinced that would be the case but I couldnt argue strongly against it

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There are a few companies around that compare the protection offered by different anti-virus programs by firing thousands of viruses, trojans, and so forth at them. Been a while since I've looked, but I think it was all much of a muchness, in that they'd all fail to detect the odd one or two but would generally hold up pretty well.

FWIW, I haven't paid for anti-virus software since Ultimate Virus Killer on the Atari ST back in the early Nineties, and I've never had any problems using the free programs (Avast's been the go-to for about a decade). Plus, my browsing habits are a disgrace  :lol:

On 20/01/2017 at 15:13, Mr X said:

I found the free ones pop up too often. Ive just switched to Webroot which is relatively inexpensive, really lightweight and fast and runs in the background with basically no prompts

Not sure about the others, but I know Avast lets you turn off the popups, which I would do if I wasn't so lazy. They can get annoying, but you can't blame them for doing it when you're paying hee-haw.

Also, and I can't stress this point enough, you can change Avast's speech files so that it talks to you like a motherfucking PIRATE! Instead of "threat has been detected", you get "AVAST! There be a scurvy man o'war off yer starboard bow!"

Add some tits and I couldn't care less whether it actually works or not.

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6 hours ago, NorthernLights said:

It might be food for thought if it was written in such a way a layman could understand. No offence to your good self but I have no idea what most of the technical terms mean so i'm none the wiser. I'm with AVG free so now don't know whether to uninstall and go back to Defender.

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Quote from the article: "The only circumstance that non-Microsoft AV might help is for PCs still running seven-year-old Windows 7, or unsupported Windows XP. In these cases, third-party AV "might make you slightly less doomed", according to O'Callahan. "

FFS what pish!

Just be careful where you are browsing, use an adblocker, but don't allow your AV programme to decide everything for you. Don't click on unknown links and watch your dodgy downloads, and no you won't be doomed. No AV is infallible. 

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8 hours ago, NorthernLights said:

Mehhh, I'm still running on Windows 7, so I'll stick with my AV program for the time being. The article refers to Windows 8 and above being OK with just having Windows Defender.

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2 hours ago, jimmy boo said:

It might be food for thought if it was written in such a way a layman could understand. No offence to your good self but I have no idea what most of the technical terms mean so i'm none the wiser. I'm with AVG free so now don't know whether to uninstall and go back to Defender.

I think theres two main points hes making. One is that the AV programmes have their own bugs and security flaws that can compromise your PC. The second is that the can conflict with security measures built into the browser making you worse off than had you let the browser handle the security. Given he used to be at Firefox its not a particularly unbiased opinion though

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On 14/02/2017 at 19:47, jimmy boo said:

It might be food for thought if it was written in such a way a layman could understand. No offence to your good self but I have no idea what most of the technical terms mean so i'm none the wiser. I'm with AVG free so now don't know whether to uninstall and go back to Defender.

I've been fine for years with Defender. Being paranoid I'm wary that AVG has some secret inbuilt coding to blow up my laptop when the Ruskies decide to embark on global domination. Got Rapport as well for internet banking and the like which slowed down my old laptop to buggery so I got rid, but seems fine on my new one.

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2 hours ago, 54_and_counting said:

that article means nothing to me given my PC is running vista still :lol:

they probably dont design viruses for this Operating system anymore

Just checked. 5 times as many people still have XP than Vista, you're probably safe. Microsoft are scrapping support in April so I'd get all the latest updates before then. 

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2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Just checked. 5 times as many people still have XP than Vista, you're probably safe. Microsoft are scrapping support in April so I'd get all the latest updates before then. 

I still run Windows XP corporate on another PC I have, also so I can still play the classic games from over 10 years ago, Resident Evil series and Toca/Grid racing sims. Got the SP3 update to a CD just in case.

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