Well if you have a gaming rig ESET Smart Security 4 is the way to go as it was specifically designed for gamers with an extremely small footprint that wont tie up your resources and will do a better job then all of those together. Check it out www.ESET.com

As i always say and will stand by it always....You get what you pay for and if you want to be cheap and go with free product just remember that nothing in this world is free. You will pay for it some how some way some day. The free versions are nothing but watered down versions of the pay for versions. Your not getting the full package or total protection. Think about it.

I have been a tech for about 10 years now and the systems i see the most that have issues with malicious software on them are ones running free AV. Not the ones who pay for and maintain there subscriptions.

Really? A virus in a 16x16 image???

Anways, avast rules, and its free.

Now I have to disagree. I've been around for a bit myself and have worked on just as many that had paid AV as free. It's partially about the user too. If the user can't understand how to use an AV, then it doesn't matter if it's paid for or not. No AV is perfect. And just because you shell out good money doesn't mean you're getting a good program.

I couldn't agree more. I don't even use anti-spyware programs. And I never...wait, my computers Croatian masters need to use it so I have to go now.

hmm

You are maybe thinking i am just a noob and don't know what iam talking about...
Well whatever floats your boat. I shared my experince that's it. I am not here to
convience any one to follow my foot steps. For novice users maybe it is better to stick with AV and think that everything will be just fine.

Best of luck.

Avast, HA...you fail.

The best combination I've found is

AVG 8.5 Free + Malwarebytes Anti-Malware + Spybot S&D + CCleaner (just to clean things up)

I found bitdefender to be the best. Especially their version for gamers. Very little interference.

My customers tell me that norton and mcafee are the best after they miss hundreds of spyware and viruses that I clean up with avg. They go out and they buy norton for over 100 dollars and uninstall avg free edition, why? Because they are a bunch of *****s.

I have been very satisfied with Sunbelt Software's Vipre. Very low overhead, stops the worst infestations that my clients running Norton and McAfee bring for removal. I uninstall their current AV/AM and install Vipre. Vipre provides free of charge a boot time scanner in case you are too infected to be able to control Windows any longer. You just need a friends computer that isn't infected to download the program, and then boot into safe mode and run the program from disk or USB drive.

Avast works great! In fact, they won an award from Virus Bulletin for this test.