Best anti virus today?

I'm looking to buy an antivirus but first I'd like some recommendations.
It needs to have real time scanning, be fast, and doesn't take up much CPU/RAM.

whs said:

There is no 'Best'. You will get as many answers as there are people on this forum. I use Norton Internet Security (NIS 2013) when I can get it for free. Else it is Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Both are good with a slight preference for Norton.

If you go by the tests, G-Data is a good one too.

I just finished up my free trial of Malwarebytes pro and it worked fine and did its job well. Where would you put that on your scale? Just looking for opinions.

I used to recommend MSE but no longer can. Its ok for a computer that is on 24/7 or will be on at a certain time everyday; otherwise, you can't get it to automatically update virus definitions. The free version of AVAST! will update virus definitions once or twice a day, no matter when you have the computer on. You also can determine how often it will check for updates, something you can't do with MSE.

whs said:

LF, every morning I look whether there are updates. And often there is a MSE definition update that was not installed. It's a bit cumbersome, but works for me. Of course NIS is more elegant.

Of course, one can manually update but why bother, especially when another AV will do it for you. Yes, I am a grumpy, lazy, old b..ch! Also absent minded.

yk7 said:

I'm looking to buy an antivirus but first I'd like some recommendations.
It needs to have real time scanning, be fast, and doesn't take up much CPU/RAM.

There are so many AV solutions out there. I would love to point you to what I would consider the most thorough review for the endpoint user via PCMag. The cover the highs and lows, included resource use. Their top ones are Webroot SecureAnywhere and Norton. Linkity here: *******/107ifWh

Lady Fitzgerald said:

whs said:

LF, every morning I look whether there are updates. And often there is a MSE definition update that was not installed. It's a bit cumbersome, but works for me. Of course NIS is more elegant.

Of course, one can manually update but why bother, especially when another AV will do it for you. Yes, I am a grumpy, lazy, old b..ch! Also absent minded.

This really strikes a chord with me. You're the end user, the purchaser of the program. Updates shouldn't be cumbersome or get in the way, and with that, why should they even be downloading?

Look into true cloud based AV solutions. I am going to cite Webroot again because instead of downloading the virus definitions to your computer, it scans from the definitions hosted in the cloud. 2MB on your computer, 13mb of ram used during a scan, and a very behind-the-scenes mentality to AV protection.

MSE is also a good solution, but it does take effort to stay updated, and I feel this image explains my position best.

Dwarf said:

Sorry, but I don't think that having a cloud AV scan your computer is very practical. How long would it take if you had over 1TB of data to scan, and your Internet connection speed was only 1Mb/s (or even less) ?

Your point is very valid with the general concept of cloud based solutions. Assuming that that you have a cloud based AV system that is scanning every file, every day, and uploading and downloading all the data, it would be beyond troublesome.

Instead, with Webroot's SecureAnywhere, it isn't scanning the full file system, but looking at active processes, parsing the entire file system to find rootkits and infections, and reading the registry, correlating entries to find links to remove files automatically. When Webroot does a deep scan, it scans for files that are threatening (active/true infections).

The scan works by looking into the system at a lower level than normal. By parsing the disk at a lower level, it is able to scan faster and look at more of the system than other AV solutions. SecureAnywhere looks for the executable files, and not at static files. So while your computer might have 1TB of data, you don't have 1TB of executables. While a static file might be malicious, it will not be activated until being opened with an executable. These scans are fast and comprehensive, looking for signature, behavioral, and heuristic information, and are not uploading the files to the server. Instead, a MD5 hash is sent up and then compared to the established database.

So, in short, you might have 1TB of data, and a slow connection, but the time put towards scanning and comparing to threats will still be far less than the time spent download new definitions every week, and far less resource hungry. With Webroot, you won't be uploading the files to the cloud to scan, but simply a small snapshot of the bones of those files.