Which anti-virus would you guys say is the best?

i believe that AVG is pretty good but i have been wanting to try out some others to compare.

Personally I believe AntiVir is better, because it has higher detection rates and is lighter on resources.

hmmm, i have been looking at AntiVir because it looks pretty damn good, well Cnet's Download.com says so anyway.

i might just install AntiVir and compare it to AVG to see which one i prefer.

Avira, Kaspersky, Bitdefender and NOD32 are the best Antivirus for me.

yeah i heard about NOD32 being rather good, but when i downloaded TinyXp Christmas Edition and ran the mini windows 95 PE (which has NOD32 as an antivirus software) it won't let me download the newest updates.

I have always liked ZoneAlarm best. I have used if for years

You can look at some reputable tests, such as AV-Comparatives and AV-Test. Remove-Malware is also an interesting website which tests various products. All of them agree AntiVir has one of the highest detection rates, if not the highest.

Plus if you're going to install AntiVir make sure you've uninstalled AVG first.

Slightly off topic, but personally I find the security advice and reviews on download.com to be absolute rubbish. All they seem to do is to list features, and they don't even do a proper job of that.

Also, maybe it would be a good idea if other posters explained the reason why they think an AV is the best.

Nod 32 without a doubt (ease of use,light on RAM,and a good AV), AVG is an over bloated RAM eater

hmmm, my AVG is only using 3MB RAM, not quite sure how thats bloated but if your really looking for a RAM eater, buy Norton

Norton's latest 2009 version does not consume resources like previous versions and has received excellent reviews.

also i really, really do not wish to pay for Anti-Virus protection which a free product can do pretty much better

I use Avira free myself but Norton's new product vastly improved.

fair enough, i tried out avira and done a full scan of my computer and it found nothing (which is no different to AVG ) so i am going to stick with AVG but install Avira again, but without the 'Guard' option so that i can use it when/IF AVG fails on me

Hi Joshse,

Most will recommend that you only have one anti-virus installed even if only one is active. Apparently they can conflict with each other and actually increase your chances of becoming infected. I used to have Avast and Avira installed leaving only one active and alternating scans between them until I noticed the experts consistently advising against this practice.

hmmmm, i have heard about this but never really took much notice. i don't really understand why it would compromise my anti-virus protection, and know that sometimes if an anti-virus scan is started and the scan finds a Heuristics file, it can be classed as a virus or spyware. i never really had any trouble in the past with having 2 antivirus installed where one was deactivated.

Here is a link to a thread where it is explained in more detail. Check out quietman7's post #11 on page 1 and Galadriel's post #20 on page 2 on issues with having two virus checkers installed. These folks are very knowledgeable on the subject.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic222671.html

hahahaha, i found that rather funny but ok i understand, thank you for sharing this information with me, and have proceeded in uninstalling Avira (i am gonna stick with AVG as i have never had any problems with it )

:D thanks again Justa