There are many sorts of free antivirus programs, but the good and bad points has never been compared to each other. So we did the test for you and have the solution for you.
First we installed the program’s one by one and prevail them for a test on our pc, with an average data of 16 GB on the hard-disk. We let the anti-virus programs scan the pc (with some options on, like scanning compressed files). We let the pc do a complete scan of the hard-disk in the most default mode of the program itself. Advanced features where not changed. Of course it’s always difficult to compare programs on a long term, because with every update of the programs there will be features added to get a better program. The same for the virus-definitions. The number of viruses that can be recognized by the program depends very much on their updates. And even the best paid programs may be unable to just find that last virus.
You can find comments over the interface, the software in general, and the length of time it took up a system scan (how many files the program eventually searched and scanned). You can find the virus-detection for each application just below the name of the program. Eventually, they were ranked from the most popular to the least popular. Notice that we only talk about antivirus software and not anti-spyware software, such as ad-aware or Spybot. However a fact is that a large part of the spyware is found by some programs, and deleted by them. Microsoft Security Essentials is such a program. And probably one of the best anti-virus programs off this time.
AOL Active Virus Shieldvirus-detection score: 99,62%; total needed time: 31 min, 16 sec
total files scanned: 224,565
First, the bad news: the software needs an e-mail activation code (this means that you have to register yourself online, and this can take a long time till you get registered). Therefore we can’t blame someone if he don’t trust the AOL logo, not AOL itself but Kaspersky provides you the technical aspects of the antivirus program. It also installs a AOL search bar in your browser, and may be experienced as annoying. However, you can disable this option during the installation.
The good news: the software has a good appearance and is very easy to use. A ‘progress bar’ appears during the scans, along with the time remaining to complete the work. The virus detection score. gr is outside all expectations very high. We are a little astonished at the fact that Active Virus Shield skipped 70.000 files and did not scanned the files. However other virus-protection programs did scan de files. It’s not something to be worried about. You maybe think your bad protected against viruses. These files are maybe identified as not dangerous. Another reason may be that this program counts the files on in different way.
Avast! 4.7 Home Editionvirus-detection score: 87,46%; total needed time: 49 min, 7 sec
total files scanned: 292,713
Where aren’t a big fan of Avast! Interface. It looks like an ordinary mp3-player with extra’s like a minimum design. Avast chooses to have an option to get a less intensive scan by not scanning files witch appear to be safe.
There’s till many work to the looks of the program, with an interface that looks like a volume control on some PC’s and laptops. How do you know how stressful a scan really is. Is 4 of the 6 files scanning enough? There’s even no progress bar during a scan, so you never know if the scan has 3 or 30 minutes to go. And it goes painfully slow. And the sub-90% virus.gr score is also not exactly true. The program comes with a trial of 60 days, then you will be prompted to register (you got to specify an e-mail address if you still want to run the program for free). And to make things even more negative: it is too difficult to navigate and the program makes it easy to configure something wrong, but it works just well enough. PC World ranked Avast! They were testing different virus scanners on the speed and efficiency, while scanning a range of viruses. And guess what? The program was too slow. And so the virus.gr was going down.
virus-detection score: 94,26%; total needed time: 14 min, 23 sec
total files scanned: 182,215
AntiVir is relatively popular, and why: it is very fast, and it seems that it uses less power of the pc during scanning files on your hard disk. But Avira Security software has at least 1 very bad feature: the annoying pop-up menus with a post of their paid software applications. To configure the program is reasonable, there is even a wizard integrated in the program. There are also advanced options available. At least, if you paid for this piece of software. The general detection score is very well. And this is what makes Avira a good security software. If avast! does not work for you, take Avira AntiVir. I had this program for a long time running on my pc. I was surprised of the speed and big protection. The pop-up menu’s became normal. Unfortunately, I switched to Microsoft Security Essentials which not only detect and block viruses but also spy-ware and ad-ware where blocked. And not unimportant : Microsoft Security Essentials shows no pop-up advertising for a paid version. So there is still much work to be done by AntiVir Avira.
Microsoft Security EssentialsA new player on the market of free antivirus programs. The program is out for a while and was created by Microsoft itself. The expectations were high, and there for Microsoft does it well. The program is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. And there is good news for 64-bit computers. There are 32 bit and 64 bit versions available and completely free to download from the Microsoft Web sites. The program is working correctly and even fully automatically and efficiently. Not only viruses but also spyware are deleted automatically. And of course updating virus definitions are done automatically. The pc can be scanned for viruses on a regular basis. You can customize the date and time when it has to scan. There’s even an option to do a quick scan or a full scan of the system. The advantage of a quick scan is that only the files that are needed in order to keep the pc running are scanned, such as the Windows and program files folders. Microsoft Essentials automatically disabled Defender, the program is superfluous because the functions of Defender is also integrated in to Microsoft Essentials Security.
Conclusion
We need to reconsider our opinion. There where AntiVir Personal Edition Classic was the best, followed by AVG (whiteout an annoying pop-up window), we now come to the conclusion that Microsoft Security Essentials, for us, at least, has become the number 1. From our view, Microsoft Security Essentials will even beat some paying programs like McAfee, Norton, and the most hyped Kaspersky.
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