TechDish: Antivirus - Free vs Paid

Posted on: Fri, 11/18/2011 - 10:32 — us104_techdish

This week we talked about antivirus—a topic that we've covered before, and we'll cover many more times in the future. Why? Because virus infections on computers are constantly changing, and so is antivirus software. Think of this as a great arms race between good and evil, in attempts to mitigate the threat of losing your data, your configuration, and your time.

Free Antivirus versus Paid Antivirus

I've had a lot of conversations with customers asking about the validity of free antivirus solutions. Products like Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast!, AVG and Comodo Internet Security are great products in their own right, and are all Free. But how do they match up to paid solutions from Norton, Trend Micro and Kaspersky?

The bottom line is this: a Free solution will not cost you any dollars, but it will cost you your time. Product support on Free antivirus is limited, at best. Expect some time tinkering with your software, and extra time troubleshooting if you run into problems. A paid solution will have a support line you can call if/when you have trouble, and a staff that can walk you through fixes (or take care of them remotely).

But why listen to us? We've got knowledge from our experiences with individual products we've seen in action, but don't have the resources to do a full on study/comparison. But we're in luck—others do!.

Here's a couple of independent industry watchdog groups that have published their findings online for you to make an even more educated decision.

• Virus Bulletin
• AV Comparatives