Five Free Antivirus

Avast 4 Home Edition

One of the top free antivirus programs on the market today is Avast! Home Edition. At first glance, some users may be turned off by the late 90s era media player design that the program features, but you have to dig deeper to find the true value of Avast!. You will most likely not be spending that much time looking at the interface of the program itself, but if you are concerned by the appearance, you might want to skip over this software.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition

If you are looking for absolute protection against viruses and that is your main concern, then you might get Avira AntiVir Personal Edition. None of the other free suites offer detection capability that matches AntiVir’s, so if you have no other concerns, you have found your perfect match. In addition to the excellent detection capabilities, Avira AntiVir is also very light on system resources. While this is good for users with an older system, the software is not supported on the oldest Windows operating systems.

AVG

AVG certainly has a history of antivirus protection to boast about; it has been around since 1991. Obviously, the product has been improved since then. The result is a fairly robust and dependable virus detection suite. While the features of the free AVG version are fairly extensive and not nearly as limited as AntiVir’s, you will miss out on the detection of rootkits. Despite that, you still retain the features of virus detection, spyware detection, and phishing and scam e-mail protection.

MicroWorld Free AntiVirus Toolkit Utility

If you are looking for a lighter and easier piece of software, you might look at MicroWorld’s toolkit. As opposed to the first three suites, MicroWorld Free AntiVirus does not require any installation. All that you have to do to get it running is download it from the website and then start using it.

McAfee Free Services

McAfee FreeScan is a tool that runs from the McAfee website and scans your computer for infections. Since it operates from the Internet, there is very little impact on your system. Unfortunately, it is a very slow method of scanning. One advantage of scanning from the Internet is that it will always be drawing from the latest infection definitions online. It also does not automatically rid your computer of infections. Instead, it advises you on how you can go about treating the infections yourself.