Answers to Everyday Questions : Are the free anti-virus and firewall program as good as payed ones?

Are the free anti-virus and firewall program as good as payed ones?

10 Responses to “Are the free anti-virus and firewall program as good as payed ones?”

1. spacedude4 said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 2:18 am

   yes they are, they just don’t offer unlimited things like forever free scanning. Maximum pc just reviewed some free ones and Avast came out on top.
2. Rigo said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 2:22 am

   They are every bit as so and perhaps even better. Especially when compared to Norton and McAffee.

   AVG and Avast! are two of the better known ones and they are very good, and are constantly being updated.

   Though if you are looking for a very good paid option, Kaspersky is one of the best.
3. God's little helper said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 2:38 am

   I haven’t had an problems with free ones. Avast offers real-time protection(its free), and it updates frequently. Alot of people use AVG too. Not sure if it offers real-time protection, meaning it catches most bad stuff before it infects not after the fact. The ones you pay for sometimes can be resource hogs, but they are usually pretty good(if kept up to date). If you have the money I would stay with McAfee and keep it up to date. If you are have problems and your keeping it up to date, then switch.
4. t_milson said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 3:35 am

   I have had avg free for around 4 years now and it has never given my problem ive also got avg anti spy which is also an awsome little program both programs are constantly being upgraded to protect against the latest threats, i had norton and to be honest with you in comparison of avg free 7.5 its absolutley rubbish, My advise dont pay for something if you can get something for free. download avg free 7.5
5. Homer said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 4:26 am

   AVG and Avast.. I’ve used them both and never had a problem. I tend to like Avast better though. It has a data recovery utility just in case something does sneak by or is allowed inadvertently. As far as firewalls go, I use sygate (not available any longer, norton bought them out). There are others out there as well. the best advise I can give you is to try the free firewalls one at a time till you find one that suits you. you can go to
   http://www.grc.com/intro.htm and click on shields up.. then scroll down the page to shields up and allow the site to scan your PC for open ports. It will give you a readout on whether open ports are found… ports are alive but blocked… or all your ports are stealthed because the firewall won’t respond and tell the world you are there.

   My PC is completely stealthed, dropping any scan packets without telling the other person that.. yes there is a PC there but it’s blocked. Disabling my firewall and running windows firewall will reveal that , yes there is a pc there but all ports are blocked. Obviously being in stealth is the best because what a hacker can’t see.. he can do nothing but find one somewhere else to work on.

   Good luck
6. nick bo said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 5:19 am

   yes but not always! do not trust every single freebie cause not every one is trustble. Have you ever heard of bugs/ trojans and spyware ! they r quite anoyying ! once they get in to ya computer they atck evry good thing on it.It happened to me ! i preffer Avg anti spy ware or anti-virus/ for tricky spy wares SmitfraudFix. they r trusty and can be trusted. they payed ones are the best as always (Norton 360 is the most powerful anti-virus softy that was evr made.)
   Buy how ever you could have them for free and i mean the full version but i am not gonna say HOW in public because they call count as hacking.
   as the summury the payied ones are much better and free ones are not always trusty. there r good ones as well.
7. weeJaY said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 5:43 am

   yes, i’ve tried the free version of nod32. I’ve been using it for 2 years and I havent encountered any infection. It is more powerful than mcafee and norton and any other antivirus. But it is only a 30day trial. you just have to unistall and install in afterwards, thats the hassle but its worth it, thinking that your pc will not get infected.
8. lucee said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 5:54 am

   Is my firewall and Avast as good as a “paid” one? Well, since I’ve been using both for years, I’d have to say, overwhelmingly, YES! I have never had a virus get past either the firewall or Avast. And Avast updates daily, as soon as I log into the internet. It runs in real time, which means it runs as long as my computer is on. It protects my Outlook email, which is even more important to me.
9. Damo said :
   October 17th, 2010 at 6:22 am

   The freebies are every bit as good as the paid ones because there business is based on reputation. They need to get good reviews so they can entice big business. I have Avast antivirus and comodo firewall and they work great, Adaware is a good program to have aswell.
10. Eclipse said :
    October 17th, 2010 at 6:25 am

    Is a GIMP as good as Photoshop? No. Is OpenOffice.org as good as Microsoft Office? No. Are Gimp and OpenOffice good? Yes. The only time I have seen a free product be better than a paid one is FireFox, and Opera.
    ————————————————————–
    Free antiviruses are good, but they never provide as good of protection as the big-league paid anti-viruses. The 2 best free anti viruses, are AVS (not a typo) and AntiVir. You probably haven’t heard of these two, but they are much stronger than AVG and Avast. Just go to any trust worthy anti virus comparison, such as http://av-comparison.org/ Note that the Avira, AVG, and Avast programs used are the paid versions, but they use the same database, so their results will be about the same (not as good, but close), AVS uses the Kaspersky engine, so it will also be very close to Kaspersky. As you can see, AVG and Avast are no comparison. I used AVG on a computer and it found 11 viruses, but it could only remove 5 of them. Then I tried AVS, and not only did it remove the other 6, but it found 4 other viruses that AVG missed. The same thing happened with Avast. I was using it on the computer I am using right now. I scanned my computer about twice a week, and it always said that my computer was clean. Then I kept hearing more and more about an anti virus called AntiVir, so I gave it a try. It found 9 trojans, and a rootkit, all of them which Avast had missed. Also it is much lighter than Avast. So if you do want to stick with a free anti virus, choose AVS or AntiVir, But for better protection, get Norton, Kaspersky, or Nod32 (which I am currently using, it is probably the best out of the 3).