Expert: Lorry - 5/6/2009

Question
Do you recommend AVG free for antivirus, or a "paid" version from say Norton or Mcafee? Free sounds great, but can it really be depended on as much as the paid ones? How often do they update AVG free? I currently run Norton Antivirus 2005 (with updated defs of course), and for spyware I use both Defender and Ad-Aware AE free.

Thanks for your time.

Answer
Hi Brian,

Personally I would stay with Norton Anti-Virus. Watch for sales that offer a sale price, rebate from Symantec or the store where you purchase it, plus a rebate for previous owners. By doing that, you will get it for free or darn close to it after the rebates.

The main reason why I like NAV is that it will remove or explain to you how to remove a threat found in a scan, whereas AVG or Avast will let you know that it found something but doesn't give directions on how to remove.

The main things to remember no matter which program you use is to keep it up to date and run a scan once a week.

Hope this helps!
Lorry