Anti-virus

[Kurokami]

Is there a good free/cheap anti-virus /malware protection?
thanks for any help.

[Nidua]

AVG is probably one of the most famous free Anti-Viruses out there.
Personally I recommend buying or running AVG free.

If you want something more secure but maybe abit more costy, go for NOD32 that's probably one of the most light weight and secure AV's I know of.

http://free.avg.com/ww-en/homepage

http://www.eset.com/Nod32

[Deleted]

Cause of personal problems with AVG. I suggest Avira Antivir Its a very lightweight antivirus that ive used for several years and never had any problems!

[Cilraaz]

I recently switched to Microsoft Security Essentials. It's been efficient and light-weight.

[Deleted]

I'd listen to Cilraaz Can recommend it myself.

[Asera]

I use MSSE at work as well, definitely the best free AV I've used. Way better than AVG.

I use NOD32 at home though.

Both of them are incredibly lightweight.

[Deleted]

Avira at 1264 K memory usage while idle and 0 CPU usage like always when not scanning/updating.
It also seems to get very regular updates. Almost daily i get a popup like: "10 Files were updated" etc.

[Kyocere]

I recently switched to Microsoft Security Essentials. It's been efficient and light-weight.

I put this on my GF's computer which isn't very powerful. She has had zero complaints about it effecting performance like she did with the last anti virus program she had.

[llDemonll]

I recently switched to Microsoft Security Essentials. It's been efficient and light-weight.

this. most all anti-virus programs pull from the same virus definition database so they're all essentially the same. only real differences are real-time scanning (which MSE doesn't have from what i am aware of) which is what uses up resources

[Dion04]

Another vote for MSSE as the best Free AV for legitimate windows installations.

[haxartus]

this. most all anti-virus programs pull from the same virus definition database

Not exactly true. It's not so simple.
Let's say we test the virus with 25 antivirus programs. It might get detected by only one antivirus and stay 1/25 for weeks. Then after a month or so it can get detected by 15/25, and some of the "popular" and "big" antivirus software might still fail to detect it for another month or two. Or even more.
Antiviruses that rely mostly on signature based detection usually suck.

[llDemonll]

Yes, but there is a common database of existing definitions somewhere that programs are free to pull from. Of course the up-to-date definitions will be different (which are usually what matter) as that is what differentiates some products