I got a license which will expire on April 2028 - 11 years of free use! Though I did not install many features, but only opt for Ransomware protection, Real Sites, Sandbox, and Firewall.
In my opinion Panda is lighter and Bitdefender is the most effective. My choice is Avast which is good in both cases. Qihoo360 and Kaspersky are also good, but Avast is more complete. Here I am using CF with the Cruel Sister settings and the ZAM with Pandora active.
Thats not always a bad issue, KFA is connected to KSN which is connected with the system watcher from paid products, so in other words as long you are not the first one to be infected you receive immidiatly protection via the cloud (ksn)... so it will protect you without the need of a BB.
Now i'm using BD free but i think maybe i will switch to KFA once it is available in my native language. (already tested the english version and its realy good)
Bitdefender Free: it's cut down version, having basically the signatures of BD paid. It has very few customisation options. It is more lightweight, but sometimes a bit buggy, like an unfinished project.
Avast Free: multiple layers of protection, including a behaviour blocker and several options available to tweak. It's my option on the free side.
AVG: almost as good as Avast. But it comes bloated with cleaning tools and more naggings.
Panda Free: never used, but the results on the reviews out there shows poor protection.
Yes, correct... but maybe 360 Total Security will be a competition for Avast, for it has many features (some are bloat) and customizations. But 360 will not be able to compete toe-to-toe with Avast I think.
Yes, correct... but maybe 360 Total Security will be a competition for Avast, for it has many features (some are bloat) and customizations. But 360 will not be able to compete toe-to-toe with Avast I think.
Qihoo360 has delayed signatures for avira and epsecially BD + its cloud engine is really poor. I'm talking about the detection rate against new malwares. With all 3 engines enabled, the detection rate is nowhere near the other competitors
moreover, the behavior blocker is also really poor which makes 360 infected almost everytime it was tested in malwarehub. It's only good against ransomwares due to its HIPS. This is my observation with my own testing
qihoo is never my option to use alone as an AV. It must be combined with other products like anti-exe or SRP, sandbox
Avast has hardened mode and other other customizable features. hardened mode + disable powershell, java and windows script host, it would be really difficult to bypass it. I have seen only 1 benign malware that bypassed it
Thats not always a bad issue, KFA is connected to KSN which is connected with the system watcher from paid products, so in other words as long you are not the first one to be infected you receive immidiatly protection via the cloud (ksn)... so it will protect you without the need of a BB.
Yeah, you have a point KSN is really a powerful network. The only downside is if I use my netbook offline which is rarely the case.
My only problem with Kaspersky Free is sometimes my Windows 10 Creators Update fails to boot (hybrid shutdown/hibernate) that I have to restart it by force. This never happens in BitDefender Free.
Bitdefender Free: it's cut down version, having basically the signatures of BD paid. It has very few customisation options. It is more lightweight, but sometimes a bit buggy, like an unfinished project.
My problems with Bitdefender Free:
1. Notifications about resolved malware take too long to show up - sometimes after a minute that the malware has been removed.
2. Even if I turn off its Protection Shield, the AVC still works, sometimes even the exclusions have been set. This is really annoying.
In my case, I tried 360 with all engines on and it slowed down my PC (which I noted when I accessed folders using Windows Explorer). The same happened to Panda.
For Avast, AVG, and even Avira, I did not detect a slowdown, but popup ads appeared which I could not disable.
For Bitdefender, I experienced difficulty installing it because I had an older version installed. Also, updates fail once in a while, etc.
Thats not always a bad issue, KFA is connected to KSN which is connected with the system watcher from paid products, so in other words as long you are not the first one to be infected you receive immidiatly protection via the cloud (ksn)... so it will protect you without the need of a BB.
That's true if you're not the unlucky person who gets infected first and if you don't go offline frequently. But KFA also does the opposite: they collect intelligence from the free users in order to apply it for their paid customers (as implied by Eugene); free users are in a way their guinea pigs and that's a risk, IMO.
For now I am using AVAST Internet Security which will expire on April 2028 - 11 years of use
But, I am thinking of throwing it away because of GUI glitches - often the main screen goes blank, have to wait for some seconds before buttons/texts show up!