Commercial vs Free antivirus/firewall

[rion]

afaik, avg free sucks, bitdefender free version doesn't have resident shield...

[ManicMan]

Over the last 15 years I've always made it a point to use only licensed anti-virus software. I've used the best McAfee, Symantec and, lately, BitDefender products. All full-featured versions. And yet an occasional virus, trojan or malware still manages to slip through. You can just imagine the amount of infestation you'll get with the free, limited-featured versions. Nowadays the only sure way to keep your computer virus-free is to never turn it on.

[Jun aka Pekto]

For my personal computers, I use a combination of Symantec Client Security and Spybot: Search and Destroy.

The former is the enterprise version of Norton's and is free from work. It handles the firewall, intrusion prevention, ad-blocking and privacy. Part of it too is Symantec antivirus, the enterprise version.

Spybot: S&D handles added realtime protection via SDHelper and Tea Timer.

There seems to be no conflict between the two. So, I just run them together.

I also have Symantec Antivirus (also free from work) for the Mac. I normally don't need antivirus with OSX. But, I transfer work files between Mac and pc.

"Free" is relative. My ISP offers McAffee security software as part of the subscription. It's pretty much the norm with US ISP's.

Add: It's hard to tell if they work as advertised. I have yet to see a virus/trojan horse/worm/rootkit get through to my computers. It also helps not to just click happily away without looking at what you're clicking at..... *cough "damn kid" cough*