Nowadays its quite hard to find a good antivirus that will perfectly fit your PC. There are n (n is a very big value) antiviruses that you can use but you need to consider a few factors before using/buying a antivirus software:

1. The protection it offers
2. The system requirement(you can’t install norton for example on a 300MHZ PC, well you can install it but you need to be really crazy to do that)
3. Additional features the antivirus has(firewall,spyware protection,network monitoring, etc)
4. If its a commercial antivirus you evaluate it using the 30 days trial that most commercial antiviruses offer. This is MANDATORY!
5. If after evaluating the antivirus you are fully satisfied with it don’t get grumpy and start thinking about other antiviruses because you don’t really like this one’s price. If it offers the protection that fits you than price is ALMOST regardless.

Over at digitalpoint there is quite a long thread going about which antivirus members prefer.

The thread started with:

Hello friends,
Currently I am using the Windows XP.
Which Anti Virus is the best one for it?

From that point lots of members expressed their opinions about different antiviruses and they shared experiences with different antiviruses.

Today the thread got almost to the end of page 14,when woke up i checked DP as usual, checked my mail and other standard websites that i check every morning. Since i didn’t have anything better to do i made this chard of what antiviruses DP members prefer:

The number next to the pie slices represents the number of people who preferred the specific antivirus.

You can clearly see from the chart that most DP members prefer NOD, right after it on position 2 stands AVG(its biggest advantage is that its free and it offers quite good protection), on 3rd position stands my favorite: Kaspersky.

Avast is preferred by quite a lot of people also(to be honest i rather use avast than AVG).

Here are a few quotes from what DP members say about the antiviruses they like:

spiritfly:

I’ve used ESET’s NOD32 for more than 7 years now and haven’t seen a real threat, highly recommended.

vlad230:

NOD32 is the best! I never had problems with viruses since I installed it

mirturk:

My decision is NOD 32. Very fast and secure.

webmasterplace:

I use NOD32, never want another one!!

gabibeowulfx:

I use NOD32 .. but it’s not virusproof .. .. I had a virus the other day that Nod just wouldn’t detect .. and I had updated virus definition … but still the best av to install ..

Nigel Lew:

Kaspersky Lab,,, hands down! It’s not free though.

ferde:

kaspersky is the one i use for years and it is very light and always the first one to detect the viruses while others dont.

mrClen:

Kaspersky is really the Best and Top’s among anti-virus programs, very reliable. Always the first one to detect while others not. I had tried avast, bitdefender, nod32 and panda but this ones A++ fo me so far.

Maddison.uk:

Kaspersky owns all other Av programs .
Simple , Fast and Efficient .

nofullstop:

kapersky is always the best choice…

sandalwood:

I would go with the AVG free version. It has saved me several times and its free root kit detector is another great program.

d16man:

AVG all the way!

EagleAmerican:

AVG gets my vote. Free or Internet Security. I use AVG Free and Comodo firewall. Works great.

ARonald:

I’m on avg free right now and am loving it. It is low on system resource usage and has a good detection rate.

usasportstraining:

Definitely AVG free edition.
Far better than Norton anyway!

You can read reviews and opinions about the other Antiviruses in the digitalpoint thread

The most critiqued antivirus was Norton, people either say it sucks, or it eats RAM like crazy and doesn’t do its job as it should:

04lwarner:

Nod32 been using 2 years no virus, Before that used norton and must have a had a 100 viruses a week lol.

warman2442:

LOL norton is one of the worst anti viruses, i would seriously rather use any free anti virus over that, probably AVG.

timsdd:

I’ll 2nd the Norton blowing. I’m sure it protects with the best of them but it is a RENOWNED resource hog. Not to mention nearly impossible to uninstall completely and furthermore it can jack your system up real good.

With the suggestions and the reviews above i’m sure that now you know a bit more about how to choose the AV that fits your PC the best, and mark my words: Security ALWAYS comes first.

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