Comprehensive List of Free AntiVirus 2013

[Dani ♡]

 

Billions of dollars are spent every year on antivirus software alone by enterprise because they know that computer virus can cause a lot of down time and making the company lose money. A computer virus can be programmed to do anything such as stealing sensitive information, locking up or slowing down the computer, data loss through corruption or deletion, and etc. With so many brands around and they all claim to be have the best detection and lightest in system resource, it is certainly not easy determining which is really the best. As for home users, most antivirus companies also offers a cheaper version that works on Windows operating system and requires an annual subscription. However, there is also a wealth of anti-virus software offered for free with the catch of disabling some of the extra defense system such as firewall, behavior blocking and also only allowing you to use it for personal home use only. After extensive research, we have come up with an up-to-date comprehensive list of free anti-virus programs for your convenience. 

1. avast! Free Antivirus

Recently avast! Free Antivirus has gained a lot of po[CENSORED]rity and has even taken the first spot in CNET’s Download.com overtaking AVG and Avira. After installing avast! Free Antivirus on our test computer, it didn’t even feel like running a crippled slim down version of an antivirus program because it has all the features from the paid version except SafeZone, Firewall and Anti-spam. The comparison chart displayed on their website says that the sandbox feature is unavailable on the free version but in fact it’s actually still there. 

Other than blocking virus and spyware, what we really liked about avast! Free Antivirus is it takes up very little memory usage and comes with extra features such as auto sandbox, boot-time scan, remote assistance, non-annoying browser protection plugins, 8 different real-time shields and cloud reputation service. 

2. AVG AntiVirus Free

The free version of AVG AntiVirus used to be the most po[CENSORED]r and well known free antivirus software and they are currently at the second spot after avast! Free Antivirus. AVG has an updated graphical user interface to match the Windows 8 modern UI. It helps protect your computer from viruses, malicious emails, web-based attacks, and identity theft. The anti-spam, firewall and performance fix functions are excluded from the free version. Surprisingly phone support is available to free users but only for certain countries such as US and UK. 

We were quite annoyed by the whole installation process because it takes 3 steps to get it completely installed and updated. Firstly we need to download a small 4MB web installer to download the full installation file. After installation, there’s another 60MB of definition file to download. They do have the full distributable setup file buried somewhere deep in their website. Pay attention during install as the AVG Security Toolbar will install by default. 

3. Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+

We were eager to test Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ because it used to be a very good anti-spyware program that in recent years has turned into a full fledged antivirus program and taking the third spot. The free version of Ad-Aware uses the Vipre engine but weirdly Ad-Aware Total Security uses G Data’s engine. The user interface looks a bit dated and not very user friendly at first as we had to look a bit harder to find the button to manually check for definition updates. 

Most of the advanced protection features that is taking most of the space on the GUI are unavailable in the free version. The installation process wasn’t that bad as the 6MB installer automatically downloads and installs the latest version of program and definition on your computer. There is a gaming mode where you can turn off all notification to prevent you from being kicked out while you are playing a full screen game. 

4. Avira Free Antivirus

Avira is well known for its superior detection where it tags everything that moves silently in the Windows operating system. After installing Avira, you should see that most of the features are grayed out and only the button to enable/disable the real time protection against virus, trojan, spyware and malware is accessible. 

Avira Free Antivirus used to rank number 1 but has dropped to 4 probably due to them embedding a toolbar and changing the web browser’s default search provider to ASK.com. Although the SearchFree toolbar by ASK.com can be opted out of during installation, it is with a cost of disabling the web protection feature. Moreover the daily notifier popups of recommending you to upgrade is a bit annoying as well. 

5. ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall

ZoneAlarm (now owned by Check Point), well known for their firewall applications has added an award winning antivirus engine by Kaspersky. If you didn’t know, Kaspersky has always been a shareware that is at the top spots for independent detection rate tests even if they do not take the first place. Thanks to ZoneAlarm, they made it possible for anyone to use the excellent Kaspersky engine from their ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall product. 

Most free antivirus software offers very minimal functionality other than the real time virus detection and protection but ZoneAlarm wins in this area by offering a really good antivirus engine, identity protection and a firewall if you need protection against hackers getting in to your computer. Both the user interface and settings are straight forward and not confusing. The game mode can be enabled from the Tools menu and you can even password protect the application to prevent against unauthorized access to the program.