Battle Most user-friendly free antivirus

[Littlebits]

What is the most user-friendly free antivirus that you have ever tried?

I'm talking about requires very little or no maintenance/tweaking to be effective blocking common malware threats.

This is not poll to talk about detection rates, how light the products are compared to others. etc. Just user-friendliness is the only concern in this poll.

I know we have many other threads and polls that talks about other issues but none talk about the most user-friendly antivirus.

I believe this is the most important concern for many users, if a product isn't user-friendly then no matter how good the detection rate is or how good the protections features are, it will not benefit the user.

Note: The is a limit of 10 options, if none of the options apply please post it.

Enjoy!!

 

[Deleted member 178]

MSE because you have nothing to do to make it run properly.

 

[madyrocksin]

I voted for Avira,
But i think KIS though not user friendly but its more like an install and forget, so should be good as most user friendly (Just my thought, since many of my friends don't even know how to handle and auto update notification )

 

[Littlebits]

MSE because you have nothing to do to make it run properly.

Agree MSE was made with user-friendliness as the top priority.
But they are others like Panda Cloud Antivirus, FortiClient Lite and Immunet FREE Antivirus that require nothing to make them run properly either.

I never tried Kingsoft Free Antivirus maybe it might be a good option.

It is going to be a close call.

Enjoy!!

 

[samit]

my vote goes for MSE / Windows Defender(windows 8).....you have nothing to configure....its just install and forget....

 

[Spirit]

Obviously MSE

Generally I never vote but only comment but voted in this thread as I am sure I choose correct option

 

[Deleted member 178]

Agree MSE was made with user-friendliness as the top priority.
But they are others like Panda Cloud Antivirus, FortiClient Lite and Immunet FREE Antivirus that require nothing to make them run properly either.

I never tried Kingsoft Free Antivirus maybe it might be a good option.

It is going to be a close call.

I agree, Panda is my second choice, but you have to click on it sometimes, so MSE still win

When i install Win8 on my gf computer, she ask me where is the AV, i said to her it is built-in Win8 so no need to install one, she don't believe me at beginning, i used to test some AV oin her computer

 

[Plexx]

I am going to say EAM as a first choice. Reason being EAM works just out of the box. Its defaults settings encourage Install and Forget. There is no maintenance required.

 

[Littlebits]

I am going to say EAM as a first choice. Reason being EAM works just out of the box. Its defaults settings encourage Install and Forget. There is no maintenance required.

EAM is NOT free, what would you say is the most user-friendly free antivirus?

Thanks.

 

[Plexx]

EAM is NOT free, what would you say is the most user-friendly free antivirus?

Thanks.

My apologies, I completely missed out the Free on your post. Should have had my coffee prior to post.

Well in this case, then it is sort of a tie between avast! and MSE in my opinion. Both are user friendly and both work just fine out of the box.

One may argue that avast would require some more tweakings to be fully effective but at its default it is fine for average user.


Edit: weighting everything, my vote goes for avast!

 

[McLovin]

Well, it's certainly not Comodo, Avast and AVG. They have too many settings for that. Like others have said MSE would have to be the one where you can just install and leave, which to some users that is probably the best thing ever.

 

[Viking]

For me its PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus. Although its not free, the free version is just a scale down basic version of it. Its setting/options are very easy to configure and understand.

 

[tapoo]

i would go for AVAST free , because its also a quite good antivirus, and user-friendly also, after install it works silently....

 

[illumination]

There are a few in the list that could be considered set and forget, but i still would have to say MSE would be the top in this category.

 

[thecombo101]

I vote for MSE, it's install and forget and also works out of the box pretty much.

 

[Valentin N]

Avast is for me; it comes well-configured out of the box and you can tweak it if needed.

 

[Exterminator]

I voted for Avast because it can be installed on a home users PC with default settings and will provide them with a good level of protection alongside Windows Firewall.You can instruct a novice user on how to,download,install,set updates and register it fairly easily.The program is not intimidating for most average users and once it is installed there arent too many reasons why the average user needs to mess around with the settings.

 

[Coffeeman]

I have voted for avast! because after using MSE who seemed childish not user friendly, avast! is very user friendly.

 

[Spirit]

I have voted for avast! because after using MSE who seemed childish not user friendly, avast! is very user friendly.

Can you please describe?

 

[arsenaloyal]

Microsoft Security Essentials / Windows Defender most certainly. why is it user friendly ? Well there are no settings like set heuristics to high normal default etc with most antiviruses these days.

theres nothing really to configure except to add exceptions which is important in case of false positive and perhaps usb scan.

Windows defender in windows 8 does not even have a scheduler in the interface so to make it less confusing and is automatically pre-configured to quick scan your system every day and not to mention the lack of a tray icon which i believe is a first for any modern antivirus and I assume the only one right now.

does this help the average user ? definitely, by average user i mean people like my dad, who just use the system and the internet for their daily work and prefer not to be bothered by notifications and stuff.