Over the years, I have used both Norton and McAfee anti-virus programs, and, over all, they have performed fairly well. I didn’t mind paying a small fee after the first year of use to keep the virus definitions updated and my PCs protected. Over the years the update fee increased from $2.95 a year and went up to $29.95 a year. It was actually cheaper to buy a new upgrade (when on sale), than to pay for the yearly subscription. But having five computers in the house, even upgrading to the latest version was getting expensive.

So after about three years I began to test some of the free anti-virus programs on one of my computers. I uninstalled Norton and tried both AVG and Avast!, which had been recommended on the Lockergnome forum by some of my associates. The first thing I noticed was that both of these free programs used less resources on my systems, i.e. I had more available memory to use for other tasks. The second thing I noticed was that by system seemed to run faster. Hmm… ? But how well would these programs protect my system?

I eventually settled on AVG as my primary anti-virus program for all of my systems. And after three years of using AVG free edition, I have not had a virus infection on any of my systems. I chose AVG because I liked the simple interface the product offered and having recommended this product to many of my clients, have received few complaints about its operation and functionality. And avast! is also a great product, and I would also recommend it as well. So which either you choose, you will find that your system will be protected for free and will run better.

AVG free edition can be found here - AVG FREE EDITION - just click on the link.

avast! free edition can be found here - AVAST! FREE EDITION - just click on the link.

Are there other free anti-virus programs you can try? Yes there are. You can do a Google search for a listing of other products that are available for free.

Next - rogue anti-spyware products

[tags]Norton ,McAfee, Lockergnome, free, AVG, avast[/tags]