There is no "best". Free, paid, antivirus or suite, they all let things slip by. If you like super simple, go with MSE. If you want total control, go with Comodo. You want something light on resources, with good detection, go with avast! There really is no wrong answer.
I personally use Kaspersky Internet Security, and sometimes I install AVG Internet Security on other machines. KIS is by far one of the best you can buy, but it can slow things down when doing a full scan though. AVG, to me, seems to be a few notches above MSE. The thing with AVG is it has MAJOR issues with false positives....obnoxious.
Speaking of MSE, I know someone who works at the hospital here and he's told me that MSE is installed on every machine there. I winced at that because if there was code that could make its way into the system, it could easily kill MSE's process in Task Manager. That's my stickler with it though.
Honestly I have yet to see one that just doesn't pop up with problems now and then. ...this could of course be because I'm incredibly active in debugging here.
The ones I have seen the fewest trouble posts about are probably kapersky and ESET. Though I don't use either personally, I haven't seen many dump files pointing to them as the cause of an issue.
The real problem is windows has a somewhat open nature compared to OSX+ and linux.
The thing a lot of these AV's are doing to try and compensate for that is blocking some features that while not used often by many people can become a real problem for others.
You trade off for just about everything, you can use an AV that provides the best level of detection and protection but you may suffer a problem with it blocking a proper system driver, protocol, or function at some place down the road.
While it's not a problem for geeks who can weed out the setting/trigger event themselves it is a problem for common users, which is why I stick to suggesting the one with the fewest known compatibility issues instead of what may be the actual best protection.
At the end of the day a good bit of commonsense will keep you from even needing the protection.
Most viruses are rather easy to clean out after all.
Do a custom install. If you use a web based mail provider (Yahoo!, ect..), then don't install the mail shield. If you don IM or use P2P, then don't install those either. If you don't like gadgets, then don't install it. Same with the WebRep (like WOT) browser add-on.
It's your machine, install what you need!
The File, Web, Network and Behavior Shields are a must!!
I wouldn't be too concerned about that the systems in those hospitals are pretty well controlled, they are probably using mse because it's the least issue causing and they don't expect much of anything to sneak by the first layer of defense. Since not a single user in the entire complex has an admin account.
Most of the time those machines don't even have flash player and other basics installed to their web browsers. As we as having those net nanny type programs that keeps people from visiting all but the most rudimentary of sites.
Have had some experience with this recently because my mom was in the hospital.
You can dump McAfee all day long. WOT is just OK, and not a real security measure. Norton DNS ( Norton DNS ) is better then both WOT and McAfee combined, and it doesn't take any of your machine's resources. A layered approach is the best, and the DNS is a great 1st line.
You're welcome! Norton DNS is a great free tool, and for me, it's even faster then my ISP's DNS.
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