Anti-virus - what is the best free option today?

[[AK]Clay]

Congrats to me, my computer is now officially one year old! I know this because my anti-virus license that came with it, has now expired.

I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with it, and don't want to purchase a renewal license. In the past AVG had an excellent free version of their anti-virus. Who has the best today?

[[AK]Hylander]

Clay,

I've found AVG Free has gotten a little 'bloated', so I've switched to Avira AntiVir Personal which is free as well.

It has an annoying pop-up screen, but luckily it can easily be disabled.

I'm not even sure why I still use an antivirus at all, I haven't had a hit on anything in so long I can't remember the last time it happened. Just a force of Windows habit I guess.

[[AK]The Beast]

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.

[[AK]Nuts]

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.

[Moon]

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.

[[AK]Bribo]

Agree with Moon. I run AVG on my kids machines with no problems.

[[AK]Hylander]

Just read this a few minutes ago.