Advice Request Lightest Free antivirus for lowend laptop

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navidlukas

navidlukas

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Jun 15, 2022
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Looking for the lightest free antivirus that takes up low memory for a low end laptop. Just looked at the task manager, and saw MS Defender taking up 128MB, and contanctly hogging the cpu and internet because of the sumbit sample function etc....I really dont need all this fancy stuff on a low end laptop.

A bit of googling says Kaspersky free is very low on memory....didnt try it yet. Looking for something small and simple....bitdefender free? Whats your opinion guys...

this also looks usefull

www.av-comparatives.org

Performance Test April 2021

Performance Test April 2021 for Microsoft Windows 10 security products released, 17 products' impact on system performance was tested
www.av-comparatives.org www.av-comparatives.org
 
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Task manager isnt accurate, you need Process Explorer or Process hacker to reveal the actual memory usage.

Considering its an laptop there is not an single antivirus that will not take up all the resources, especially if it has no SSD.

I would never trust any of these "test" results by these "independent" labs, they arent trustworthy anymore ever since they began testing Potentially Unwanted Programs, with the results being not only highly misleading but also varying way too much to be an accurate source of information.
 
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Pat MacKnife said:
Panda Should be light (but protection ???) other Free Avira ...
Click to expand...

Panda's protection is bad 😉

In free Antivirus, I would say Microsoft Defender, Avira or Kaspersky / Bitdefender Free
Excellent protections that won't sacrifice your computer's performance!
 
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Bitdefender Antivirus Free. Of all the free av's I have tried BD Free is by far the least worrisome. It does occasionally send you tips about data leaks and hacked sites and offers you to upgrade to a paid version but those are not very frequent. RAM usage does not really factor in to an AV but BD will use more RAM in the beginning but it will settle down after it learns your system. I like BD because it is a set and forget solution with very strong protection that stays out of my way.

C.H.
 
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Captain Holly said:
Bitdefender Antivirus Free. Of all the free av's I have tried BD Free is by far the least worrisome. It does occasionally send you tips about data leaks and hacked sites and offers you to upgrade to a paid version but those are not very frequent. RAM usage does not really factor in to an AV but BD will use more RAM in the beginning but it will settle down after it learns your system. I like BD because it is a set and forget solution with very strong protection that stays out of my way.

C.H.
Click to expand...
Bitdefender uses 600-700 megabytes of RAM...
 
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Captain Holly said:
Bitdefender Antivirus Free. Of all the free av's I have tried BD Free is by far the least worrisome. It does occasionally send you tips about data leaks and hacked sites and offers you to upgrade to a paid version but those are not very frequent. RAM usage does not really factor in to an AV but BD will use more RAM in the beginning but it will settle down after it learns your system. I like BD because it is a set and forget solution with very strong protection that stays out of my way.

C.H.
Click to expand...
Users may turn off special offers and "Recommendation notifications" in settings, but otherwise I agree with you. Definitely stays out the way.
 
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navidlukas said:
Looking for the lightest free antivirus that takes up low memory for a low end laptop. Just looked at the task manager, and saw MS Defender taking up 128MB, and contanctly hogging the cpu and internet because of the sumbit sample function etc....I really dont need all this fancy stuff on a low end laptop.

A bit of googling says Kaspersky free is very low on memory....didnt try it yet. Looking for something small and simple....bitdefender free? Whats your opinion guys...

this also looks usefull

www.av-comparatives.org

Performance Test April 2021

Performance Test April 2021 for Microsoft Windows 10 security products released, 17 products' impact on system performance was tested
www.av-comparatives.org www.av-comparatives.org
Click to expand...

WiseVector StopX. It has a thread here on the fora. Extremely light, extremely potent.
 
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