Windows 10: What AV would you recommend to me?

McAfee is good works beautifully and does its job no trouble at all

 

ESET, it won't slow down your system but its not free but if you want free try Avast

 

I have been using Norton 360 Premier for years and have had no problems. The never version is less buggy and doesn't seem to affect my laptop's performance. It has done it's job keeping my laptop virus free. The only down side, it's costly to renew. *sarc

 

That's exaggerating the facts. Defender has always done better than 80%. In fact, it always does very well against known threats scoring in the very high 90's, consistently about 97-99%. It is the weakest against new or zero day malware where it employs some cloud and heuristic functions but still scores lower than other products. The facts are however, that the chances of a home user encountering a new threat before signatures are released for it are very, very small. The new Defender is supposed to be better against new and unknown things but only time can tell. You also have to take the results of any testing organization with a large grain of salt. They purposely expose systems to things that 99.9% of regular users would never have to worry about. Defender is not the strongest protection you can have but for the majority of users can be sufficient. If it is coupled with a good zero day analyzer like the free Malwarebytes anti-exploit, the degree of protection is very high.

Having said all that, I am not currently relying on Defender. I was using the free version of Bitdefender but it now is not compatible with Windows 10. They say there will be a new version but they give no timeframe. I now am using the free version of Panda 2016. It is extremely light weight, fast, and strong. Just make sure that when you install it, you reject all of the optional stuff including the Panda Security Toolbar. The toolbar is made by another company called Visicom who are in the business of collecting browsing data for use in targeted advertising and that is what the toolbar does under the guise of providing web filtering (which it does a poor job of in tests). The malware and phishing protection that is built into all of the major browsers does a better job, especially in IE and Chrome, so the toolbar is not needed.

If and when Bitdefender releases a new free version, I will definitely give it a try.

Another good alternative is the free Avast which is crammed with features that you can choose whether to employ or not. They have software updating, browser cleanup, web reputation, and a couple of other things which I deem unnecessary in an AV product but you may think otherwise. I have tried MacAfee, Avira, and AVG in the past and didn't care much for any of them.

 

I haven't tried the latest Pandra FreeAV incarnation myself. I had troubles with some older version where I wasn't able to exclude/ignore a false positive. How can you do that?.
For me WD is adequate for the majority of regular users. Some power users may want to try anything else.

 

With Panda, you have to let the file get quarantined and then exclude it from there.

 

If your a smart surfer "Defender" may be adequate but i agree with AveYo , it's definitely not the one i would choose looking for the best in protection.

 

I would support these... though if you can get around paying for anything (and you can), do it. Avast! is fine for free (or even Defender, with other layers of security to add to it). Both Malwarebytes 'Mbam' and anti-exploit have free versions, you might like. Just run Mbam from Malwarebytes on a weekly scan (manual), and practice safe browsing habits, and you'll be fine.

 

I wouldn't either but it's not as bad as some make it out to be.

 

Actually i rarely hear anything bad said about it , especially on the Windows 7 forums . I was always surprised how many preferred it and said they wouldn't use anything else to be honest .

 

That may be because it was one of the most stable out there

Edit. Meaning it worked well with the system

 

Let's say that people lurking the win..forums are 1% (in fact, not even close). These "1%" tend to be already computer-savvy, and they could stay without any AV protection, it won't make a great difference.

I too recommended and activated MSE mostly for old people/computer illiterates, just because it could be more familiar. Less "my computer is making squeaking sounds, I'm afraid to turn it back on" reports (kasperky did not have an option to turn off the detection sound for a while).
At the other end of the spectrum - the gamers, did not spent more than a few weeks with MSE. Why? Because of the horrific schedules and exclusion lists. It was simply overriding user choices, and doing that a lot. Trashing the HDD while playing a game, blocking popular no-cd's or other stuff people used to try out games (probably linked to a more aggressive move against piracy, that was dropped the next year).
What's left? The corporate level. I've only seen MSE on state-owned companies. If you already pay for MS support, why not. The others were reluctant to use a solution that was proven time and time again it's always too late. Even weeks late. And on top of it, it can break stuff by itself!

It did not take much time for the waves and waves of malware to target MSE specifically The whole fake-AV business started with this. So you had a nice and shiny icon in the systray, but in reality, it was dead and buried, or even worse, doing bad stuff. In all the 7 era, it was the easiest security solution to bypass. I've spent weeks cleaning up after systems "protected" by MSE.

What changed in 8 and 10? A lot. More robust. Better exclusion. It gets used for telemetry purposes.
What did not change in 8 and 10? A lot. Same level of protection: baseline - it all depends on your exposure (where you live, where you work, what you use) and on your luck to not get hit by first waves. Same horrific schedules. Same trashing of resources by the scanners.

So people, please stop recommending a critical software that you really did not put to use. Others might not be as lucky. Last thing, Malwarebytes is not divine - Ok, maybe their marketing is.

 

You know, I used MSE for a lot of years and never had even one instance of all the things you rant about. I play games and play from CD and never had a single issue with it. I never had a virus either. I pay attention to what web sites I go to and know what I am downloading and from who and have no cracked software. Maybe those things are the difference with your experience. I have never even heard of people complaining about most of what you are saying.

 

Thank you very much for the explanation.

 

Ditto for me. Your mileage may vary as always...