Secure Yourself

Dont know did norton stop being huge resource hog, And bitch and half to get rid of?


I been using Avast for last 5 years it not let me down, as far as virus protection goes.

 

Norton hasn't been a "huge resource hog" since 2007. With their 2008 product launch, they reduced resource usage dramatically. They also improved product effectiveness, detection and removal greatly as well. They even managed to compete with Avira for #1 for a few years until BitDefender and Kaspersky took over the top spots 2-3 years ago.

As far as their current performance, they're a bit overpriced (and overrated again). McAfee has actually caught back up to Norton in regards to prevention and removal but surpassed them in regards to detection. McAfee was rated one of the worst antivirus products on the market just a few years ago. Now McAfee is up there with the likes of Avast and Panda. Only thing stopping them from competing with Kaspersky, BitDefender and TrendMicro is a higher FP rate (comparable to Panda) and their high system impact.

Symantec chose to focus their efforts on prevention and is putting little effort into file detection and removal these days, which is very bad for antivirus that relies heavily on a signature file. Removal and File Detection are just as important as infection prevention and any company that believes otherwise isn't one you really want to buy antivirus software from.

Norton is comparable to Kaspersky for removal. Basically, either use their removal tool or format and reload everything. Still not as bad as McAfee's current products for removal. To fully remove McAfee products, a format and reload is necessary. Neither the built in uninstaller nor McAfee's own uninstall utility is capable of removing all bits of McAfee. BitDefender has the best uninstaller.....still.... Next best would be Panda Cloud. Both remove all the "important" bits.

 

So what is the best free antivirus now? And is it worth using it with windows firewall?

 

Typically ill run this on new computers

Avast or Bitdefender
Malwarebytes
ADW- Only as a secondary to malwarebytes
Windows Firewall - Rules setup manually

This is a very lightweight setup, resources do not get used near as much as they used to in the past.. remember its 2016 not 2001

But truly
If there is anything you can tell people, your friends, clients, business partners...
its common sense.
This gets looked at soo much but nobody actually practices it...

But that set up is a very widely used set up of basic home user straight forward software that will not let you down...

 

It depends on what your definition of "the best" is.

BitDefender Free is the most resource friendly but lacks a LOT of "features".
Avast is the most feature rich but is quite resource heavy.
Panda is also quite decent, but it's reliance on internet connectivity can cause some issues. It also has a higher false positive rate than Avast or Bitdefender.

Their overall effectiveness at detecting and preventing infections is about equal but Avast has an advantage when it comes to removal due to the fact that it's a full fledged antivirus with all the same settings and configuration options as the paid version and doesn't rely on an internet connection to do it's job.

Personally, if looking strictly for a "free" solution, I'd opt for Avast.