Lets start off with this simple question ( I hope it’ simple ) .. What is the first software that you install (or) should be installing when you buy yourself a new Desktop PC or a Laptop ? Any guesses ?? For the people who guessed the stuff other than the antivirus , sorry guys , you were wrong ( and cheers to those who guessed antivirus ).Yes, ANTIVRUS is the first software that you should be installing when you purchase a new PC. It’s a fact that every netizen accepts and knows; we, our data and our machines are not anymore safe on the internet. The internet today is filled with scum which comprises of Viruses,Trojans,Worms,Rootkits .. and the list which can steal your bank account details, personal data, pictures goes on .That’s not it. The so-called malware can slow down your PC, track your activities on the internet, cause your PC to shutdown intermittently, send u to a phishing site instead of your bank site, use your computer as a bot for DDOS attacks .. etc . For the ppl who are fascinated by numbers, the total losses due to malware in the US alone for the year 2007 was a whopping 7 Billion dollars ( that’s a B not an M ). So, how do you protect yourself from all these threats and browse peacefully ? The answer again is Antivirus.
I think that intro should be good enough to push you all to have an antivirus product installed on your PC if you haven’t done it yet. But, the other factor which prevents you from installing a good antivirus product is the cost incurred to get one. A good antivirus like Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky .. etc cost you an arm and a leg ( approx 2000/- per year for 1 PC ) and we don’t even bother to try them out. So, practically we either use our PC’s without an antivirus or use a pirated version of the afore mentioned ones (which need new keygens or new cracks every day/week for them to work continuously).Today I wish to end that terrible ordeal of yours which you might have probably gone through each day/week/month. Here is the list of the VERY GOOD antivirus softwares which you can use without any hassles and not even a paisa out of your pocket as they are completely FREE!! .Amazed???. Then let’s get started. One last point before we get started, these are free doesn’t mean they are less powerful than the paid ones. Check out their ratings and performance at www.av-comparatives.org ,which is an independent organization which tests the antivirus products twice a year and publishes the results.
To understand the jargon associated with the malware you can refer this site .
(www.malwarecity.com/site/Main/listDictionary/)

Here we go with our list

1) Microsoft Security Essentials: Yeah, you have read that right. The same company which provides the OS which runs on most of your computers has come up with an antivirus to protect your PC’s and the best thing about it other than its free is that it’s damn good in performance as well. I use this on my personal PC. This product has a very good malware detection rate and a high performance as well, which means this is not going to bog down your system’s resources. It has a very clean GUI with no nonsense stuff . You can download the installer from Microsoft’s site
(www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/) .The home screen looks as shown below.
Once installed correctly , the application automatically downloads the latest antivirus signatures and updates the database. Then it performs a quick scan of the system. The application receives signature updates from Microsoft every day and you can manually update the database by clicking the update link as shown in the picture below.
PROS – It’s by Microsoft, Very good malware detection, Less usage of resources, simple and clean to manage
CONS – Your system has to pass the WGA ( Windows Genuine Advantage ) check which this performs before installing the antivirus.

2) Avast! Free Antivirus :

The most popular and the oldest free antivirus. This antivirus has been with the computers ( and viruses ) since a decade and a half and even now has not lost it’s juice. The latest version from them is them is 5.0 and it brings numerous improvements to the malware detection engine like new behavioral shield, heuristics engine ..etc to name a few. It also sports a much elegant interface as compared to the music player interface of the older versions. The newer version is much lighter on resources and faster. It has a real-time shield to protect your computer against drive-by-downloads and other similar attacks which occur while you are online.
You can download the latest version of Avast from here. (www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download).
It also features a Game/Silent Mode which doesn’t pop-up any alerts when you are running games or full screen applications, a graph plot for the statistics of various avast! components.

You can download avast here. (www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download)
PROS – Lighter & faster than old versions, veteran in this business, new elegant GUI.
CONS – Less detection rate than other products, a couple of false alerts and is slower compared to other products.

3) AVIRA Antivir :

If you haven’t heard of this before , then chances are high that you will be absolutely stunned by this product’s performance, both in detection rates and performance. This awesome free antivirus always gets a A+ rating from the AV-comparitives both in performance and malware protection. This has actually helped me to restore my system when there was a conficker worm attack and none of the other AV’s could be used. The scanning speed is top notch and has very few false positives. The protection is also very good with a real-time shield against threats .If you need a very good free anti-virus other than Microsoft’s then this is the ONE for your needs. You can download Avira here

(www.free-av.de/en/trialpay_download/1/avira_antivir_personal__free_antivirus.html )

PROS – very light on resources, very fast scanning speed,A+ rating on almost all the AV tests
CONS – Have to bear with an annoying pop-up every time it updates it’s AV signatures.

4) AVG Free Antivirus :

This product is a very well known one especially with the users using free antivirus solutions. The latest version 9.0 scans the system 50% faster than the older versions. It’s good at what it should be doing – malware detection, but it slows down the boot time of the system considerably. Once in action it doesn’t cause any inconvenience to the user in terms of system performance though. This version features a a link scanner and e-mail scanner in addition to the antivirus and antimalware engines. It has a clean GUI and configuration is almost straight forward through the console. The real-time shields also do their job perfectly. The AVG 9.0 free version can me downloaded here

( free.avg.com/us-en/download?prd=afg )

PROS – neat GUI, good detection rates
CONS – Slows down the boot-time

5)ClamWin :

This antivirus product is different from all the others mentioned above, it’s open-source and is distributed under the GPL. The disadvantage with this product is that this doesn’t have the real-time shield which the others provide.
It’s good at scanning the drives at pre-scheduled times or On-demand scan and the detection rates are pretty good. So, this is the one you can consider if you don’t spend too much of your time online and have very less system resources.
The clamwin can be downloaded here from the SourceForge site.
(sourceforge.net/projects/clamwin)
PROS – less usage of system resources, open-source
CONS – No real-time shield.

Just select the one best suited-for your needs and have a happy and safe-surfing.