Andrew Wirtanen is a usability specialist in Cary, NC More »

The Best Free Anti-Virus: AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Free Edition

Do you have an expired copy of Norton or McAfee Anti-Virus? Get rid of them and download AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 Free Edition immediately! Virus protection is the most important program you can have installed on a Windows computer. New viruses are created all the time, and it is crucial to have virus protection and to be behind a router (which acts as a firewall—to keep the bad guys out of your system).

Another tip: download Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 for safer, better Web browsing (given the choice, I would recommend Firefox, but the new Internet Explorer is certainly a step up from IE6).

read more | digg story

Perfect Andy! I just built a new computer, and I was looking for a free virus protection package. I will give this a try!!!

–Joe

Hi Andy,

I’ve been using avast! antivirus on my x64 Windows for a few weeks now without any problems. It’s free for personal users, auto-updates, protects against email, network, desktop, etc, and is really fast. I haven’t noticed any lag on my system while running it.

http://www.avast.com

On my work laptop, I use Norton 2006 which is a giant piece of crap. I leave it disabled most of the time because it slows everything down so much!

Eric

Good tip, Eric.

I think both avast! and AVG are probably good choices. For x64 Windows, avast! is definitely the better choice, since it was the first anti-virus for that platform… AVG won the Virus Bulletin VB100% Award for detecting 100% of viruses, and avast! won SC (Security) Magazine’s top pick for an anti-virus in both Europe and the US.