Windows 7: Best Free Virus Protection for Windows?

Ever wonder if the free virus protection or free real-time protection of AVG, AntiVir, Avast, Panda Cloud and other free AV is enough? Do you think cloud-based protection will beat traditional antivirus solutions? Check out this comparison of the Top 10 Free Antivirus programs.
Is Free Anti-virus Enough to Protect a Computer?

Some anti-virus vendors, that do not offer free virus program but only provide commercial anti-virus solutions, claim that free virus protection is not enough. Last year, I wrote a blog entitled "It Is Not Dangerous to Rely on Free Anti-Virus", after reading a claim by Symantec that free AV is not enough. I'm sure many people who rely on paid anti-virus solutions will understand that it's not about free or paid solutions, but the settings on the PC, the users' actions while they surf, retrieve emails or download files, the support by AV vendors for their product (e.g. are the bugs being fixed, do they use advanced technology, etc), fast detection of new threats, and effective removal and detection. Also, if you look at several malware removal forums, you will find many Hijackthis or OTL logs that show that an infected computer actually uses a paid anti-virus program.

To help people understand the effectiveness of their preferred free anti-virus program, I decided to put the Top 10 free anti-virus programs to the test. What you'll see here is not a feature comparison, but a test to see if the free anti-virus solutions will detect more than 95% of malware samples and measure how fast the detection works. Note that this is not the usual "number game" comparison on detections, but whether any malware samples that are not detected are executed. If a free virus protection program failed to detect 10 malware samples, those non-detected samples will be run to determine if the free AV will trigger an alert, block and prevent the infection. However, if the free real-time protection failed to detect at least 25 malware programs, it is considered below the 95% protection level.

Ever wonder if the free virus protection or free real-time protection of AVG, AntiVir, Avast, Panda Cloud and other free AV is enough? Do you think cloud-based protection will beat traditional antivirus solutions? Check out this comparison of the

Top 10 Free Antivirus programs.


Is Free Anti-virus Enough to Protect a Computer?

Conclusions

Quite a number of security vendors are offering free virus protection which end-users can rely on for protecting Windows and their data ... Based on the real-time detection and prevention of these programs, below is the protection percentage to expect:

• PC Tools Antivirus Free - 98.5% protection in real-time.
• Avast - Provides 98% protection.
• AntiVir and Ad-Aware - Both will provide up to 97% of protection.
• Microsoft Security Essentials and Comodo Antivirus - Offer up to 95% real-time protection.
• AVG and Panda Cloud AV - Expect 94% of protection

PC Tools antivirus wins the race.