For free antivirus avira is the best. But if you want a good protection buy a license, use demos or pirated licenses. Haha.
To be more exactly. All free antivirus is a good choice if you are a few experimented in pc world and if you have a suspicious file you can scan free in Virus Total which is a free anti-viruses database file scanner. Also you can compare the Antivirus softwares with in that website making a comparison.

Pirated license ? lol. Pirated software have licenses ?. No. they're patched or cracked softwares. Besides MSE is free tool. It doesn't require any license or serial key. So you don't need to hunt for the license key anywhere or to spend money from CC. Avira is good but not perfect, it lacks with rootkits. Other antivirus like ESET Nod32 does perform well against rootkit. Never tried virus total. I'll try it on VMware. Thanks for the link.

You can test the antiviruses with Virustotal. BTW. I said about pirated licenses because there are many, for example for Kaspersky, are dedicated websites with pirated licenses, which work some days, weeks, months.....or you can use a Trial Resetter. This is the reason I said pirated licenses. Also many have like usernames the website link. I prefer Kaspersky, but is not very expensive, so I prefer to buy it. Buy many times I'm using Norton 360, because when I bought my pc came with Norton 360 and I saw the system is more faster with it.

I know about such warez sites for licenses. Which sold licenses at cheaper costs by calling them backup cds or backup licenses. I did tried kaspersky and experience was not good. I found so many pop-ups while i was surfing. It used to pop about active-x security issues. Switched to firefox later and still it was complaining with some error. I know that product is good but earlier version was not comfortable for me. Norton internet protection is shipped with most of the HP/Dell Pc's or laptops. And the performance of computer because of norton antivirus is decreased. I didn't find anything better in that antivirus. It failed to catch spywares which was detected by Spybot search and destroy. So i can safely say that spyware protection feature in norton didn't worked with me. So it's strange to hear that norton is not affecting performance in your case.

I tried AVG, which was free upto 7.5 version. I like it performance wise. And it was good at spyware and malicious script detection. Now i'm using NOD32 antivirus. Quite good antivirus cost some bucks but worth every cent of it. Good at performance, not affecting PC performance in any way. Protection and autoupdate feature is also less annoying.

When you're using Kaspersky you need to make one important thing: Disable all pop-ups warning messages from the settings panel. I know is very annoying if you have activated the warning for any little change of your system. For example: if you playing a game and wanna save in game, a little very annoying pop-up will appear and will kick you out of the game (from fullscreen). I did not playing games, but I'm working with programs like PuTTY, Adobe and much more and I prefer Norton 360 instead of Kaspersy, because I never had ""blocked host" with Norton, but with Kaspersky I was booted many times from puTTY.
It's something like this:

Kaspersky
------------

Security 10
Stealth 4 (9 with warning messages disabled)


Norton
-----------------
Security 8.5
Stealth 10 (all time)

This post has been edited by demlasjr: Oct 25 2009, 05:28 PM

Is Microsoft Security Essentials made by Microsoft company? Because the software is ideal to be included in all the copies of Windows 7 or Vista and it is a shame to have Kaspersky because I have paid a license of three months and now I have to use it, no way I wll waste my money.

Microsoft Security Essentilas have to have the following features to at least make the people to prove it:

1. Have to be light: This is a very important feature that I have to say Kaspersky doesn´t have and that disgust me when my computer crash because the antivirus is scanning a removable media or it is updating and use the triple of RAM memory than usually use.

2. Have to be good desinfecting and deleting viruses: The only time I was doubting about Kaspersky was when I get a virus from a USB that reboot my computers all the time and I didn´t get to desinfect it or delete it. And I have to download a software named Malwarebyte to help kaspersky and I understood that sometimes there are some viruses better named malware that act like a virus but sometimes they are more strong than the viruses.

3. Have to be free: I am tired of Kaspersky three months ago I have to buy a personal license because I didn´t get to work some of that licences that are jumping over internet and I had no more option than buy my personal licence. Microsoft Security Essentials have to be free.

Well this is my particular opinion about this software. When the kaspersky licence expire I will try this software. Bye.

Okay, first off, sorry about the bad grammar. I think I was in a bad mood or my afternoon eDrink crash was setting in. Sometimes I type like I talk, other times, my ideas come faster than I type or care to correct myself. All posts usually edited for spelling after I posted... at times.

Anyway, back to the subject. I've be troubleshooting PC's since, well let's just say I've been helping people along time, and have been taking tabs on online protection software, methods, and pricing as it relates to the problems at hand (or in the software vendor's words -- their solutions).

My method for an online software solution on a shoe string (no pun intended) includes:

1. Grisoft AVG Free Edition (been tinkering with this since v6, other free canidates had performance issues or customization problems)
2. Spybot S&D (web browser protection, scanner; since v14, Ad-aware was much to slow and had other sideshow scanning of no real use)
3. SpywareBlaster 4.2 (additional provides protection for web browsers)
4. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.40 (additonal scanner, the quick scan option is the fastest, and scans the most relevant areas of computer/registry)

The above software has been tested on M$ windows 2000, XP, and Vista. I have yet to get my hands on a version of Windows 7.
Other useful technologies - help safely conduct online activities.
Web spoofing
URL verifying (verifiy sites)
Firewall (incoming and outgoingblocking ports)
Packet analyzing
instant messaging
ftp/putty
DNS caching

Microsoft can't stop viruses from hitting their operating system and now they've made an anti-virus software? Now that's really funny! Releasing it for free seems a good move because I doubt most people would buy it for a price... Anyone has a good review for this thing?!

You can winsupersite.com site for the MSE review. I know winsupersite has biased reviews but that's all i can say if you're looking for in depth reviews. Other than thatslashdot and some windows fan blogs have reviews for MSE. Do check them out as well.

Ya ya... releasing for free is very intelligent move. Everyone knows that Microsoft failed at paid security market with their Onecare Live and now they are trying their luck by playing with people who cant afford money for their security and depend on freewares. Microsoft stop playing with us and concentrate on bringing a good secure, light, beautiful O.S!