Antivirus software is an essential application software to protect your system from attack or infection by virus, trojan, worm, spyware, adware, dialer, keylogger and rootkit. Nowadays, lot of Antivirus software not only detect viruses but also provide more functionalities such as detected spyware, malware, live update, auditing and many others. With increasing of malware and virus, Antivirus software cannot keep up with detecting all of it. Additionally, using more than one real-time Antivirus software will consume more system resources which further cause conflicts and even reduce protection. So this is recommend that you only choose only one Antivirus software suitable for real-time protection. This article will introduce you several free Antivirus programs which are important in protecting your system from various threats.
Avira AntiVir Personal Edition is light on resources usage with outstanding malware detection rate which better than other antivirus according to tests. However, there are some minor reservations such as does not include web or e-mail scanning capabilities which is only available in paid version.
Microsoft Security Essentials is security related application software with good detection rates for rootkits with very few false positives and light on resources usage. Additionally, Microsoft Security Essentials is good at existing malware removal. Microsoft Security Essentials suitable for average users because it automatically updates and removes threats with minimal user interaction required. Main con sides of Microsoft Security Essentials are slow scanning speeds and take long time to quarantine malware. Note that Microsoft Security Essentials requires to perform genuine validation of your Windows before download.
Avast! Free Antivirus is another popular Antivirus software with most features and full real-time capabilities including web, e-mail, IM, P2P and network shields, boot-time scanning and behavioural blocker. Newly released of Avast version 6 added more features such as internet site ratings plugin, script malware protection and limited (non-configurable) sandboxing feature.
Panda Cloud Antivirus is offers simple user interface, automatic updating and malware removal functions which are suitable for average users. Malware detection level of Panda Cloud Antivirus consider high but detection of zero day threats slightly lower. Panda Cloud Antivirus also offers behavioural blocker and web protection.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is also good choice for free Antivirus software with high level of protection and inclusion of fully-fledged behavioural blocker as Identity Protection. Downsides of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition are grown considerably in size, slow scan speeds and inclusion of advertisements at interface which can be disable.
You can increase system protection if run on-demand scans with additional Antivirus software regularly to check for threats that may be missed by main Antivirus software.
