PC Safe 2 Anti virus Programs and Firewalls

There are other drawbacks with free AVs, as I see it. For example, you don't get the support from the company that you do if you go with their payware AVs. With the free AVs you have to rely on forum help, FAQs or google searches. Although, as mentioned above, you do get email support from AVAST!. All the reputable security software companies have a substantial number of (for the most part competent) technical and sales support staff who will answer your questions usually inside of 24 hours by email or immediately by phone if you are willing to pay extra. Some, like Computer Associates and McAfee, have excellent, in my opinion, online support services which allows you to talk to real people in real time via an interactive online interface.
both the McAfee and Symantec support centers feature an automated online scan of your software which will sometimes help you fix your problem or answer your question. Usually though you need to actually talk to someone. One other problem with free AVs is that they just don't do as well (with a couple of exceptions) as the payware versions in antivirus tests.
Payware AVS, the good ones at least, all feature complete advanced heuristics protection for your PC, something which only AVg free does.
Also, free AVs are just AVs. They provide bare bones protection against virusses and that's all.You don't get any extra protection from them. Some commercial AVs, like Norton F-Secure and BitDefender come with a firewall, built in anti-spyware scanners and browser protection features which are crucial security enhancements and give your AV an all-in-one advantage.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the companies devote more time and resources to their commercial software than they do their free software, because, simply stated, that's where the money is.

Don't get me wrong here. The payware AVs suffer from problems of their own and the support they offer is not always top-notch. As I said above, free AVs are an excellent choice if you are on a budget or prefer not to pay for your software and/or are prepared to do the extra work on your own that is sometimes required when using free software.

Commmercial Anti-Virus Programs

Still, if you can afford it, for the reasons I mentioned above, I recommend you go with a payware or commercial antivirus. Simplicity and effectiveness are the two main criteria here. And no two antivirus programs meet both these requirements as well as Kaspersky and McAfee VirusScan . Both these programs rank consistently near or at the top in antivirus tests conducted by AV_Comparatives.org (AV-C) which in my opinion, are the fairest, most objective, and comprehensive av analysis and comparison on the internet. AVC doesn't tell you which AV to buy. They do not do tests solely with commercial interests, for example, PCWORLD, PCMAG and About.com. Instead they just run their tests and show you the results however imperfect they may be. The link I gave you is to the test overview. Anything with the Advanced+ rating in the bright green tab is superior.
In AV-C's tests Kaspersky is usually first. McAfee is usually second, followed closely by Norton and various others. What particularly I like about Kaspersky and McAfee is that they both set up swiftly and both have excellent default settings ( the settings of the program before you touch them )which will allow most users to get on with their PC lives without bothering too much with the interface. Updates are set for automatic by default. Schedule a scan once a week and you're laughing.
Interestingly, I have seen McAfee criticized by tech oriented users for being too simple. The same with Kaspersky.
Both McAfee and Kaspersky have well designed, simple, easy to use interfaces.
Kaspersky has just released their latest antivirus line - the 6.0 - consolidating the Personal and Pro models into one well-designed powerful AV. Kaspersky 6.0 is a really nice blend of simplicity and control. The interface is simple yet each option can be used to give you more control over what Kaspersky scans and how much protection you want it to provide you. I'm not currently using the new Kaspersky so I can't give you a lot of info about it as of this writing. There's not much in the way of reviews and details available about it right now so I can give you just a brief sketch of it.
It's worth noting however that Kaspersky 6.0 just won the Best Buy Award from Computer Shopper which came as no surprise to me. I'm sure it will continue to win more awards.

Here's the protection management interface of Kaspersky 6.0. By "protection management" I mean this is where you decide how Kaspersky guards your computer in real time. You can also get a status report of your PC and even use a link at the bottom of the interface to jump to the highly informative Kaspersky Labs forum

I will have more to say about Kaspersky as more specifics about it become available.

Now look at the interface of McAfee VirusScan

As you can see, there is really not much work involved here with McAfee. It's just about the simplest, easy to use AV I have ever used.
This is how the main interface looks upon installation. The McAfee interface you see above includes the default settings on the right (the five boxes with checks in the boxes). There's no need to tinker with them. Just click on My Computer and hit Scan. As I said, McAfee has been and can be criticized for being simple to a fault. Some people want more control over their security software. If you are more tech oriented and want more control over your AV then go with ESET or Kaspersky.
The "problem" with McAfee is that it's bare bones no frills ( albeit very good) AV protection. You get more protection with Kaspersky. For example, one extra feature I really like about Kaspersky is its ability to act like a firewall and stealth your PC while you are online and prevent DOS attacks. Kaspersky antivirus will also block any computer that tries to attack yours for as long as you specify.

*One last note about Kaspersky. Kasperky has the fastest reaction times to new virusses and worms out of all the AV companies and Kaspersky updates its AV more frequently than the other AVs some twenty times a week in fact.* Reaction times are important, perhaps more important than performance in the various AV tests. They don't get as much press and attention as detection rates but they are a crucial indicator of how on the ball your AV company is. One round of response times tests has just been done by Anti-virus researcher Andreas Marx of Av-Test.org. I linked you to the results of his 2004 response time tests a few sentences up. I found this article on his most recent tests in the Washington Post :

The results appear to show that while the major anti-virus products are still having trouble keeping up with the massive glut of new malware, most are starting to do a better job.

Average Response Time -- Product Name
Between 0 and 2 hours------>Kaspersky
Between 2 and 4 hours------>BitDefender, Dr. Web, F-Secure, Norman, Sophos
Between 4 and 6 hours------>AntiVir, Command, Ikarus, Trend Micro
Between 6 and 8 hours------>F-Prot, Panda
Between 8 and 10 hours----->AVG, Avast, eTrust-INO, McAfee, VirusBuster
Between 10 and 12 hours---->Symantec
Between 12 and 14 hours---->[none]
Between 14 and 16 hours---->[none]
Between 16 and 18 hours---->[none]
Between 18 and 20 hours---->eTrust-VET
More than 20 hours----------->[none]

For the record, here were the response times from similar tests Marx conducted last year:

Average Response Time -- Product Name
Between 0 and 2 hours------->[none]
Between 2 and 4 hours------->BitDefender, Kaspersky
Between 4 and 6 hours------->AntiVir, Dr. Web, F-Secure, Panda, RAV
Between 6 and 8 hours------->Quickheal, Sophos
Between 8 and 10 hours------>AVG, Command, F-Prot, Norman, Trend Micro, VirusBuster
Between 10 and 12 hours---->Avast, eTrust-CA
Between 12 and 14 hours---->Ikarus, McAfee
Between 14 and 16 hours---->eTrust-VET, Symantec
The research shows improvements by several anti-virus makers, including Kaspersky, Dr. Web, F-Secure, Norman, Symantec, Sophos, F-Prot, Avast, McAfee and VirusBuster. Anti-virus products that fared worse in this year's test include Panda and eTrust-VET (the latter being the same virus engine used by Zonelabs Antivirus). It is also interesting to note that some of the free anti-virus software out there (AntiVir, Avast, AVG, e.g.) actually fared better than some of the more widely used products, like McAfee and Symantec. The notable exception was the free anti-virus engine eTrust VET, which again ranked among the slowest for the second year running. Response times are, of course, just one measurement of the quality of an anti-virus product. The amount of system resources consumed by each anti-virus product, and the number of false positives (raising the alarm on something that turns out to be innocuous) also are very important factors for many companies and consumers in deciding which product to use. Marx noted that corporations are extremely intolerant of false-positives, so Symantec, McAfee and other vendors widely used in corporate environments tend to have a more complex quality-assurance process to weed out false positives; this often results in the companies taking longer to get virus definitions in place. On the other hand, smaller anti-virus companies, he said, tend to have more problems with false positives. Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of various anti-virus products, it is important to note for Windows users that using any anti-virus product is far safer than having no anti-virus software installed.

F-Secure AV, which is made by Kaspersky, also rated highest in AV-Comparatives.org's tests which should come as no surprise since Kaspersky makes their AV.
F-Secure also does not make my recommend list because its interface is, in my opinion, not as straight forward as McAfee's and Kaspersky's. For example, it takes one click too many to start a scan of your PC. You have to click on the Virus and Spy Protection tab on the left to get to the interface where the scan command is located and then look down to the bottom right to find the "Scan my computer..." command. It may sound like a quibble but I believe the most obvious function of your AV is to scan your PC for virusses. That command should never be more than one click away from the user. In other words you should only have to open the interface of the AV and click "Scan my computer". Remember I am gearing this review for those who are not tech savvy and/or those who want an AV that is (very) simple to use. I should say that I like the interface of F-Secure. It's just not the simplest of the best AVs.
One other problem I noticed with F-Secure was the sheer size of the program. It's folder is 113 megabytes. I also counted up some 60 megabytes of memory usage by F-Secure on a number of occasions and I wasn't even running a scan. I am a bit of a gamer. I play a lot of DOOM and Quake and Counter Strike. Without question, my PC ran those games better with F-Secure disabled than with it running in the background.
Compare the 60 MBs used by F-Secure with ESET, McAfee and Kaspersky, all of whom use less than half that amount of memory and you have another reason to look elsewhere for your AV.

The reason I am not including Norton in my top picks is that while its default settings are good and its detection rates high, Norton's interface is not as simple and user-friendly as McAfee's and Kaspersky's. Norton also leaves a large footprint on your system. By that I mean it is a large file, much larger than a number of the others AVs (see below). It also consumes more system resources than most other AVs and requires more work to get off your system. When I say it consumes more system resources I mean it can slow your system performance down. That seems to be the chief complaint about Norton. I have used Norton on half a dozen PCs and have had different experiences with this. On one system, a powerful gaming system, I installed a relatively small Norton program - Password Manager - and noticed a drag on performance.
On another system, a much less muscular, basic office workstation, I installed two huge Norton files - SystemWorks and Internet Security - and I noticed no decrease in system performance at all. Go figure.
It's funny about Norton. People seem to be either hot or cold about it. In my time cruising various PC help and security forums I have seen posts complaining about Norton either slowing someone's PC down or causing some other problem. I've also seen just as many posts saying that Norton has never caused any problems and that the user would not switch to another AV if you paid them.

Please note that although NOD32 rated just as well or, in fact better than McAfee and Kaspersky, its interface is more complicated for the average user than either McAfee or Kasperky. If you don't mind dealing with a techy module based interfaced then by all means go with ESET's NOD32. I really recommend it for more advanced users. I just finished a 30 day trial and was most impressed. It consumes little in the way of system resources and enjoys some of the highest detection rates in the business.(I discuss other ESET and other Avs later later). One plus for ESET is its fast scan times. NOD32 also is also quite small in comparison to other AVs. To give you an idea as to how small NOD32 is in comparison to other AVs, McAfee VirusScan is 20.3 MB, Norton is 24.6 MB, Kaspersky Personal is 13.3 MB, Kaspersky Personal Pro is 14.02 while NOD32 is only 8.3 MB! Not only that but NOD32 just won its 33rd consecutive VB100% award. In fact, NOD32 has won more VB100% awards than any other antivirus in history. One other note of interest here is that Microsoft uses Eset in its release labs which, I think is a solid endorsement.

Speaking of AV tests & awards etc., one thing, perhaps the main thing to keep in mind when deciding on an antivirus is to to look for certification of that antivirus by at least one of three main security software certification agencies, ICSA (probably the most prestigious one), Virus Bulletin and CHECKMARK . If the antivirus has been certified by (one of) these organizations, you will likely see the certifying organization's logo on the website of the company that makes the AV. If the company's AV has been certified by Virus Bulletin, you will see this logo. If it has been certified by ICSA labs, you will see this logo. If certified by CHECKMARK you will see this logo on the company's website. These awards/certifications are considered definitive and are highly coveted by the AV companies and they work very hard (at least the respectable ones do)to get them. At each testing organization's website you will be able to look at the latest results of their AV tests and find out who passed and who failed. If you don't see ( at least one of these) logos on the website of the AV you are considering, it's probably best to move on. Just one note here. Sometimes vendors have earned one of these awards/certifications but, for one reason or another, have not put it on their website. To make sure, go to the website(s) of the certifying organization(s) and check out their latest test results. ICSA may be the most prestigious of the testing agencies I just mentioned.
Here is a list of the antivirus programs certified by ICSA Labs

CA Makes some interesting points about ICSA certification here.
One note about VirusBulletin's tests. They are considered obsolete and incomplete by some experts in the field. Eugene Kaspersky points out that: these tests are far from perfect. The test standards were developed in the mid-1990s and have barely changed since then. Antivirus products are tested using a collection of files infected by ITW viruses. The award is given on the basis of the test results. However, the ITW collection only contains between two to three thousand files - fewer malicious programs than appear in the wild in the space of a single month. Therefore, a VB100% award doesn't necessarily mean that a product really provides protection against all types of malware. It simply means that the product copes well with VirusBulletin's ITW collection, nothing more. There's one other AV testing organization that you should take a look at and that's AV-Test.org. I reference it above. AV-Test.org is an independent German lab (led by Andreas Marx) that enjoys the confidence of many AV gurus including Mary Landesman. Mary, by the way, is an acknowledged expert in firewalls, spyware scanners, antivirus programs virus/malware removal and prevention. She also hosts the About Antivirus Forum which you can join for free.
Be sure to check out Mary's various internet security articles when you have the chance and/or are looking for security software.
AV-Test.org peforms tests on anivirus programs either for or in conjunction with numerous publications including PCWORLD for whom AV-Test.org just did a round of antivirus testing. They also just recently tested three free AVs-AVAST!, AVG and AnitVir- for Mary Landesman.

I'd like to close this section by clarifying a potential misunderstanding of my antivirus advice and analysis (above). There is no such thing as a bad choice of antivirus as long as you stay with the proven time-tested AVs and the companies that make them. Just because I speak highly of Kaspersky (and McAfee) does not mean you have made a mistake going with F-Secure or AVAST! or Norton. Each of the AVs I have mentioned (above)is good. When I say Kaspersky or McAfee are consistently at or near the top in AV tests, I am not saying the others are at the bottom. If you were to meet me on the sidewalk and tell me you had just bought Trend Micro's or Panda's AV, I would say "Great!". Stick with the reputable AVs and you'll do fine.

Here is a list of (most of) them in no particular order:

Panda Labs	AVAST! 4 Pro	AVG Professional
AntiVir (free and Premium)	F-Secure (uses Kaspersky's engine)	BitDefender 9 Standard and Professional Plus
Norton	McAfeeVirusScan	Trend Micro
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0	NOD32 named the "Best Antivirus Product of 2006" by AV-Comparatives.org	CA - www.ca.com
Norman (includes McAfee and Kaspersky as options in its GFI ISA server security program)	Aladdin (uses Kaspersky's engine)	CyberScrub (is actually Kaspersky-Lite which Kaspersky has discontinued) Great deal. For the same price that you pay for a one year license of the other AVs, you get a 5 year license with CyberScrub. Download a trial here
F-Prot	Command Based on F-Prot. Designed for Enterprise level deployment	AVK. Excellent choice. Uses Kaspersky & BitDefender's engines
Extendia (uses AVK see above)	Steganos (uses Kaspersky engine. It's a Kaspersky clone.)	Zone Alarm (uses Kaspersky's antivirus

My Top Three AVs:

ESET
Kaspersky
McAfee

I rank ESET and McAfee quite close together. I give McAfee the edge because its interface is a little simpler than ESET's.If you're an intermediate or advanced user, go for ESET.

**Update**

Based on the latest tests by Av-Comparatives which now lists BitDefender on the first tier of excellence and PCWORLD's latest review of AVs, and the user-friendly interface, I am adding BitDefender Standard and Pro to my recommend list. I am going to put them in the third spot over ESET only because their interfaces are so self-explanatory. The info the user needs to operate the BitDefender antivirus is included in the interface itself sparing one the need to go looking in the help file or searching online for help.

Here is the interface of BitDefender 9 Standard. Here is the interface for BitDefender 9 Professional.

One last point about AVs: Compatability is the big equalizer when it comes to deciding on an AV. An AV must not conflict with your other software programs and/or your operating system. A top ranking doesn't help you much if the AV causes problems on your PC and you have to uninstall it. So unless you're sure about your choice of AV, I recommend you download a trial of it first.

Stay abreast of the latest news and developments in the antivirus world by checking out my Antivirus News page. I've set up an antivirus news feed using Google and Yahoo! news. I'm quite happy with it. I'm sure you'll see something there that interests you.

Firewalls

Just like antivirus programs, there are a number of good free firewalls available these days. These free firewalls are just older versions of the company's current firewall offering. They don't have all the features or the company support that their pay versions do. But if you're looking for basic, no frills protection, you have some good options.
Here's a list of the most popular free firewalls:

Each of these companies will offer you the chance to download a 15-30 day trial of their newest firewall. I recommend you avail yourself of this opportunity for a couple of reasons. One, why not get a state of the art firewall for free even if it's free for a relatively short time? Two, quite often the firewall companies will offer you a better deal on their newest firewall if you are already using their free firewall.

As with the antivirus programs, I recommend that you go with the payware/commercial firewalls and for the same reasons. And just like AV's you should also look for the ICSA logo on the firewalls page. Right now, as far as desktop firewalls are concerned, only McAfee can lay claim to ICSA certification. ICSA certification means that the firewall demonstrates the capacity to:

support networking capabilities while providing end point protection
support concurrent dial-up and LAN connectivity
block common external network attacks
restrict outgoing network communications
maintain consistent protection across multiple successive dial-up connections
log events in a consistent and useful manner.

It's funny that McAfee seems to be the only company that can meet these seemingly basic requirements. Other personal firewall makers have in the past met these standards, for example Norton and Sygate. However, ICSA standards, while useful, are not the be-all and end-all of firewall selection. Some firewalls provide more service and functionality than others, including McAfee. Each firewall is weak where another is strong and vice-versa. The best known, most popular firewall is probably Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm Pro is a phenomenal firewall. ZA is the firewall Steve Gibson of "Shields UP!" likes and recommends. ZA is not ICSA certified but it always gets favorable reviews and awards. It does a couple of things McAfee doesn't. For example, protects against adware/spyware cookies, checks incoming and outgoing email for various security threats and quarantines suspicious emails automatically. ZA pro's email checker works well, does not conflict with, your AV. My favorite firewalls are ZA and McAfee. Outpost, Sygate and Kaspersky are also good. But don't take my word for it. Shop around and compare the features and read reviews of the various firewalls.
As with AVs, the most important thing about your firewall is that it must not conflict with any of your programs already installed on your PC. All the awards and certifications mean little if your firewall conflicts with one of your other programs and causes your PC to freeze.

If you don't want to spend a lot of time sifting and sorting your way through the various AVs and firewalls out there, go with an Internet Security Suite. Security Suites provide all in one protection against internet threats. Their big advantage, along with price, is that they require only one decision on the part of the buyer. There's no simpler way to settle on a security setup. Your typical internet security suite includes a firewall, an antivirus, a spam filter an antispy/adware scanner and a "safe" in which you can store your valuable data, e.g. credit card numbers. The knock on these security suites is that the individual components are not as good together as they are separately. I'm not sure I agree with or understand this criticism. I have used Norton's, McAfee's and ZA's security suites and found no difference in performance between the components in the suite and separately. As always, make sure you decide which suite or configuration is right for you. For most people it's a trial and error process. The I recommend to you are Trend Micro and Zone Alarm. I really like Trend Micro's security suite because it is so simple to use and asks so little of the user. I like ZA because of its Mailsafe and anti-adware features. This website has a collection of good internet security suite reviews. Another internet security suite to consider is that of F-Secure. Among other things, F-Secure's internet security suite comes with a good antivirus (made by Kaspersky), a decent firewall and a first rate adware scanner - Ad-Aware SE . Unfortunately, there are no free internet security suites. So if cash is short go with a free AV and firewall. Zone Alarm and AVG would make a nice combo.

Try A Few Out

If you're unsure about which AV/firewall combo to get or if you want first-class protection but can't afford it right now, is to take advantage of the generous offers from Panda, Symantec, F-Secure, CA, McAfee and Trend Micro on the Microsoft Security Software Trial & Downloads page. Each of these companies offers extended trial periods of their antivirus and/or firewalls And, when I say generous, I mean generous. CA is offering a one year trial for it's ICSA certified anitivrus. F-Secure is offering a 6 month trial of its AV. McAfee, Panda, Trend, Micro and Symantec are offering 3 month trials of their Firewalls and AVs. You really can't lose. The other neat thing about these offers is that you also get the option of buying these companies' programs at very good prices. In fact, that's how I wound up with McAfee on my PC!

If you're the daring experimental type there's yet another option - beta testing. In order to get a real assessment of their new products' performances, security software companies have to know how their newest software performs in the everyday world of the internet surfer. And they have to know how they will do before they market them. To this end most companies will give surfers the chance to download these test versions for free and ask in return that you provide feedback to them as to how their new products are performing. The catch is that the companies assume no responsibility for any problems you have with the beta programs. If the program causes your PC to crash or hang, you're on your own. It's just you and the beta program.

The upside of beta testing apart from getting a free security software program is that you stand a fair chance of getting the beta program for free when the company officially rolls out the product and makes it available to the public. Right now there are a few companies offering beta testing opportunities - Kaspersky, Symantec for its Norton 2006 AV, F-Secure for its Internet Security Suite and McAfee **Note: McAfee's sign up page does not support Firefox.**
You can keep up with the very latest on beta product releases and just-released tech apps at Beta News. Lots of good info there. Beta News also puts out a news feed which you can check out here. I just wish I could keep up with it all but I haven't been able to keep up since I started building this site.

Of course, you sometimes get free security software or relatively good deals on it when you sign up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) like AOL , EarthLink , Time Warner, NetZero and NetScape and that takes some, if not most, of the hassle out of deciding on your security software. My ISP, for example - Shaw Cable - supplies F-Secure's outstanding Internet Security Suite to all its users for free.