ShareThisOne of my favorite computer magazines, PC World, this month did a rundown of the best free anti-virus products on the market. The results were surprising.
No, the free tools actually did a good job. That wasn't the surprising part. What was news to me was that AVG Free Edition, the most common free AV tool out there, ended up in third place behind Avira AntiVir Personal and Alwil Avast AntiVirus Home Edition.
The PC World folks tested these products against the normal suite of viruses, Trojans and rootkits and dutifully reported which products fixed the most and the winner got the top spot. That's all well and good, but you need to take a deeper look at these products.
For one, Avira is a fine product and does a great job. In the PC World tests it found 98.9 percent of the malware that was tossed at it, a good score. However, I would like to say this product has a terrible user interface (think "Zork") and daily pop-up ads designed to drive users insane. There is a price for "free" and daily annoyance is too high a price.
The second-place winner, Avast, comes from the Czech Republic and the interface reflects that. It is another fine product that many basic computer users won't be able to run correctly. For some reason it looks like a music player and has a menu structure that no one will understand. It also requires an e-mail address to register.
Third place is AVG, which used to be my favorite free anti-virus product. It has a very good user interface and is simple to install. It had a 95.8 percent detection rate, which is still quite good. It is a very good "set it and forget it" application, although you will see an ad once in a while. (You also will see an annoying renewal/upgrade option every year or so to get you to the latest free version, upon which the company will try to sell you the paid version.)
It also scans mail, which is not common among the free products.
What I feel will knock all of these off their perch is Microsoft Security Essentials, which is due to be released next month. This free product, once called Microsoft OneCare, has the best interface of the bunch, is perfectly integrated with Windows and is a breeze to install. In the PC World tests it found 97.8 percent of the malware tossed at it. The main complaint the magazine had was the scan speed, but what this product does that the others do not is a sort of live scan; when it finds a potentially bad file, it also checks the latest database of threats online before allowing the user to interact with it. That is a good idea, not a bad one.
Once the full force of Microsoft gets behind a free product, the competition had better worry (see also: Netscape). This product, which is out in beta now, is only going to get better and by Christmas it will be the standard for new PCs out of the gate.
(James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer-repair firm and a tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim(at)cyberdads.com.)
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