I've scanned thousands of computers over the course of several years and the majority of those scans were performed with multiple AV products.
My personal choice? NOD32.
And sure, while my experience covers a large swath of systems, AVs and many years, I admit my observations are merely anecdotal. I have no fancy spreadsheet or pie charts to represent what I've seen in the field, but I can tell you NOD32 works very well.
The truth is, most AV products clean the vast majority of viruses you'll find. What sets them apart is avoiding false positives and features.
AVG, for example, is a respectable virus scanner. I feel AVG is "good enough" and I recommend it to my clients on a tight budget. Kaspersky has also been very good, but the scans take a lot of time to perform (especially on the job) and I've had quite a few false positives. I quit fooling with Norton years ago.. maybe it is better now.. but I won't ever touch another Norton product again after all the BS I've encountered over the years with the program itself. Avira and Trend Micro have been good as well, but again, I don't like the false positives.
When all is said and done, sngx has the right idea -- prevention is key. Use your noggin, update your software regularly and don't surf the "seedy" areas of the web. As long as you have some experience with the web, you'll be just fine, even without AV. If you don't have much experience though, you might want to get yourself an AV. The free ones (AVG, Avira and Avast) are all perfectly acceptable and will protect you well.
My personal choice? NOD32.
And sure, while my experience covers a large swath of systems, AVs and many years, I admit my observations are merely anecdotal. I have no fancy spreadsheet or pie charts to represent what I've seen in the field, but I can tell you NOD32 works very well.
The truth is, most AV products clean the vast majority of viruses you'll find. What sets them apart is avoiding false positives and features.
AVG, for example, is a respectable virus scanner. I feel AVG is "good enough" and I recommend it to my clients on a tight budget. Kaspersky has also been very good, but the scans take a lot of time to perform (especially on the job) and I've had quite a few false positives. I quit fooling with Norton years ago.. maybe it is better now.. but I won't ever touch another Norton product again after all the BS I've encountered over the years with the program itself. Avira and Trend Micro have been good as well, but again, I don't like the false positives.
When all is said and done, sngx has the right idea -- prevention is key. Use your noggin, update your software regularly and don't surf the "seedy" areas of the web. As long as you have some experience with the web, you'll be just fine, even without AV. If you don't have much experience though, you might want to get yourself an AV. The free ones (AVG, Avira and Avast) are all perfectly acceptable and will protect you well.