By One of my mates asked me to sort out some free Anti Virus software for his sister a couple of weeks ago. I finally got around to doing so today. Rather than just sorting out 1 for her I've put together a CD with a few choices for her to pick from:
- A-Squared 3
- AVG Anti Virus Free Edition v7.5
- Avast Home Edition v4.7
- Aviva AntiVir Personal Edition v7.06
- BitDefender Free Edition 10
- ClamWin Antivrus v0.92
- Comodo AntiVirus 2.0 beta
- PC Tools Antivirus 4.0
I've also included 4 choices of Firewalls:
- Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro
- Comodo Firewall Version 3.0
- Sunbelt Personal Firewall
- ZoneAlarm® Free Firewall
4 online scanners in case she ever runs into something the Anti Virus software can't sort:
And I've also added:
I've also left a note on the CD recommending either AVG or Avast as the AntiVirus I would use if I was going to use a freebie. I've also suggested that any 1 of the 4 Firewalls would be a good free choice. And, finally, I've recommended that she install Spybot.
Would you not recommend Ad-aware?
I think I will put one of those disks together. Seems like a good idea for when I go to sort out people's machines and they say "oh, do I need anti-virus, I don't download anything?"
I would recommend Ad-Aware but for the fact it's not actually free. The main aim was to put together a cd with just free options.
I just use the free elements of ad-aware.
I think I will try the Spybot and see what that's like
I've always tended to use Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy in tandem. Neither get rid of everything by themselves but together they make a great combination.
Nice additional feature of Spybot is the way it adds phishing sites to the Windows Hosts file. Anything it recognises as a phishing site it adds a 127.0.0.1 entry to the Hosts file. That way, any time something tries to open up that website it just cycles it back to the localhost. Nice and simple blocking mechanism.
Another useful utility for the slightly more adventurous is HijackThis from Trend Micro which can help diagnose problems with trojans adding themselves to the registry.