Never pay for antivirus. Ever

On 8-19-2011 we tweeted that “One should never pay for having an antivirus, but they are sure to pay for NOT having one.” That comment spurred some questions about the antivirus software and the industry in general.

The second half of the tweet says that “they are sure to pay for NOT having one.” No matter how careful you are. Regardless of what you use your machine for or who uses it you will eventually have an encounter with a virus of some kind. You simply cannot go around the internet without some kind of defense in place to guard. Problem is the press has overhyped much of the computer virus situation and marketers have blown the concept of ‘you get what you pay for’ to levels that are just disgustingly greedy.

The most common question I hear is “Did I waste my money on renewing my <insert pay-for antivirus here> subscription?”
Typical answer, unfortunately yes.

There have been free anti-virus solutions around for the last 10+ years, most for home users only and until recently they were pretty basic and didn’t work all that well.

Times. Have. Changed.

There are 3 that I like and 1 that I love for home use. And they all beat out the big name pay-for  Norton & MacAfee. The 3 solutions that I like but that cost nothing are Avast free, AVG, & Avira Free. None of these leave a huge foot print on your machine, they don’t invade the operation of every program, and they just work. Norton and McAffe load several bloated applications to do a number of things to ‘protect’ you. These free applications are comparatively small, so they install quickly and load quickly. Norton internet security suite was notorious in the past for causing more problems than it solved (McAffe wasn’t much better). This is actually so common the first thing I would do when servicing a machine that had one of these applications was to simply remove it. 40% of the time that one action fixed their issues. Everything from machines that refused to get online to bootup errors have been caused by expensive software that was totally un-necessary.

But the biggest issue is that the pay-for versions miss just as much (and sometimes more) than the free software. They also seem to want to remind you they are there and working. You shouldn’t need a reminder that your software is doing what its suppose to, unless that software is prone to failure. So now you know why they keep telling you everything they are doing.

The one solution that I love isn’t perfect, but none are. It installs quickly, silently, and without bugging me. It runs quietly,  it’s free, and updates on its own without any prompting. Sometimes I forget its even there. EXACTLY LIKE AN ANTIVIRUS SHOULD! It performs just as well as the other free solutions and sometimes better. Microsoft Security Essentials is why you should never ever buy another antivirus. You can download and install it from windows updates.

So you can pay for software that will slow your machine, take up tons of space, annoy you at every turn, be a royal pain, and then demand that you pay more money when the subscription runs out. I just don’t know why you would WANT to when there are better programs out there that don’t cost you anything.