I've been trying out Microsoft Security Essentials, because I've found similar bloat in McAfee VirusScan. It has a relatively small memory footprint, and has so far done a fine job of keeping me virus-free.
August Knights
Secretary of War
Brewmaster
I've been trying out Microsoft Security Essentials, because I've found similar bloat in McAfee VirusScan. It has a relatively small memory footprint, and has so far done a fine job of keeping me virus-free.
Hands down the best out there is Sophos. It's not available for home purchase though. Currently the Vatican, NSA, & GE all use it. I've got about 150 additional licenses available. I can probably set one aside for you... just send me a note. It comes with ZERO tech support for home users but it's bloat free and update-able forever. Let me know.
I tend to disagree on the AVG. Why? I keep it under control and have virtually no bloat. How? In services I set "watchdog" to manual which eliminates tray bloat, however I allow email scanning to run automatic which does not cause any problems or tray bloat. I do not allow it automatic updates or run times. I update and run when I feel like. I recently updated to AVG9 which seems to be the best so far but is still similar to AVG8.5. Also it has an AVG safe search addon for Firefox and it works quite nicely. In all the years I've run the various versions of AVG, I have yet to get hit. Holidays are usually the worst times and sometimes I'll find some nasties roped and hog tied in the vault.
Agree with Moon. I run AVG on my kids machines with no problems.
[AK]Bribo
If you were a zombie and I had to kill you, I'd feel sad.
OS X
The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles.
I sometimes wonder about that. The claim is that Apple is virus free, because it's a different OS. The counter claim is that because it has such low market share, no one bothers to write a virus for it. If that counter claim is true, that's not a comforting position. All it takes is for someone to decide he doesn't want to be a me-too virus writer, but really make a name for himself and stand out. And so target Apple.
I'm not sure how these things work though. The way virus' propagate, maybe they basically can't propagate if something has a low market share - because there's not enough "hosts bodies" out there to keep the strain alive.