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]

They need preschool characters like Sesame Street, Barney, Reading Rainbow, Blue’s Clues, Teletubbies, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, etc.

Teletubbies is a very potent choice :666:

 

[malbky]

Wont agree the windows defender in windows 8 is a good option. It lacks context menu scanning.
Best option is MSE or Avira for that matter which provide a decent level of default security and are fully automated.

 

[Spirit]

Wont agree the windows defender in windows 8 is a good option. It lacks context menu scanning.
Best option is MSE or Avira for that matter which provide a decent level of default security and are fully automated.

With few tweaks you can:

1. Press Windows Key + R combination, type Regedt32.exe in Run dialog box and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate yo the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\folder\shell
3. Create a sub key in the left pane, name it WindowsDefender.

4. In the right pane of above created sub-key, create two DWORDS and use following data for them:

Icon – %ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll
This adds the Windows Defender Icon.

MUI – Scan With Windows Defender
You can use any text here, that you want to show in context menu.

5. Now we have to assign a command. So create the sub-key Command under the key WindowsDefender.

6. In the right pane of above created sub key, modify default DWORD value with following command:

“C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MpCmdRun.exe” -scan -scantype 3 -SignatureUpdate -file %1

7. That’s it. Now pick any folder and right-click on it to get the Windows Defender’s scan option. It will scan and you’ll see a command prompt window for some seconds. Any infection will be reported via this command prompt window.

via

 

[Overkill]

Can you make Tom and Jerry edition?

Jerry found and was caught. Tom is moving it to quarantine (dish) and it will be deleted after few hours (digestion).

User friendliness in order (my opinion):
1. MSE: easiest installation process, very easy to use. Least false positive amount.
2. Avast: Easy installation, and easy to operate, almost like install and forget. But my friends who have it find the sandbox feature confusing.
3. Avira: Installation can be confusing. It requires user interaction when there is detection.
4. AVG: Easy installation, user interaction required when there is detection. Highest false positive amount between all of these.

Yea Tom & Jerry is my fav as well lol
MSE is the most user friendly but I would also vote for panda since there's not a whole lot of settings

 

[malbky]

That command line scanner is not good enough. Why could not microsoft have simply integrated MSE in with it.
MSE has also some advanced configuration options which are absent in Windows defender.
So I am strict no for windows defender.
The only thing great its updates are fast and quick. My intial update just took 15mins.

 

[malbky]

That Mickey edition is great Xidus. How about making a whole Mickey theme for Windows 8?

 

[icorino]

Personally i'd choose Avira with Avast as a close second. MSE is not always convincing with its detection rate (especially in the past) and MSE got high false positives.

user-friendly =! out of the box 'failproof' protection

 

[Littlebits]

Personally i'd choose Avira with Avast as a close second. MSE is not always convincing with its detection rate (especially in the past) and MSE got high false positives.

user-friendly =! out of the box 'failproof' protection

MSE got high false positives, you must be joking. It has less false positives then any other AV. I have never once experienced not one single false positive with MSE, I wished I could say that about the rest of the AV's.

Thanks.

 

[flik]

The best thing in MSE is the zero false positives, that's why is the most user friendly av.

 

[McLovin]

The best thing in MSE is the zero false positives, that's why is the most user friendly av.

Well there is certainly quite a few of False Positives when I tested MSE. Could of been the test I did, but not the best for FP. Plus has no web filter, but mind you it does have it in IE.

 

[sarahmsarah]

Why didn't you mentioned Unthreat Antivirus? I've used it for a while and I'm very happy with it, have you ever heard of it?

 

[Deleted member 178]

Why didn't you mentioned Unthreat Antivirus? I've used it for a while and I'm very happy with it, have you ever heard of it?

We know it, it was tested here


but;

UnThreat Antivirus secretly sold to Polmont Ventures, Ltd/Bandoo Media Inc, Discordia Ltd: "known for rogueware, scam/phishing and malware distributions".

The company is known as a puppet company created by RIAA to take down file sharing applications and networks.
Currently own the new iMesh, BearShare, fake Shareaza, Lphant (fake eMule), jZip (fake 7zip), iLivid Free Download Manager and Download Manager Plus (both are clones of the open-source Free Download Manager with added malware) and no telling how many more.

The company was also involved with the buy out of iMesh, BearShare and Lphant (was previously a trusted eMule clone). They couldn't buy out Shareaza so they hijacked their domain and added scam version of Shareaza which still operates. The company also supports SOPA and has worked with ISP to block BitTorrent traffic.

 

[Payback]

I would go with Avast Free Anti-virus (I don't use free softwares, at all. But you know...Avast is best against the rest. but for paid,I'll rather prefer Kaspersky or Comodo or Eset or something like that.)

Thank you

 

[Edward ST]

My choose is Avira antivirus because it's light and it has a simple intuitive interface

 

[Merebear1101]

I love avast free. It is easy to work with. It hasn't failed a test yet.

 

[Payback]

I love avast free. It is easy to work with. It hasn't failed a test yet.

I suppose you meant it does not got 50% (or lower) score in test,yet?

 

[tapoo]

No one voted for Kingsoft and AVG !!!!
Why Comodo Antivirus is not in the list ???
http://www.comodo.com/home/internet-security/antivirus.php?track=2336&key5sk1=3b58a09d06f1155733659b0fc42962603220d19d&key5sk2=2128&key5sk3=1358731660000&key5sk4=2767&key5sk5=1358731668000&key5sk6=2767&key5sk7=1358731690000&key5sk8=2336&key5sk9=1358731698000&key6sk1=&key6sk2=CH240131252&key6sk3=7&key6sk4=en-us&key6sk5=IN&key6sk6=0&key6sk7=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.comodo.com%2F&key6sk8=11531&key6sk9=1600900&key6sk10=true&key6sk11=01a9f8e0f7561c3d3bddc374244a12a721777492&key6sk12=2034&key7sk1=2&key7sk2=22&key1sk1=dt&key1sk2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.comodo.com%2F

 

[Deleted member 178]

Why Comodo Antivirus is not in the list ???

because anything that has an HIPS can't be user-friendly.

 

[Payback]

Why Comodo Antivirus is not in the list ???

because anything that has an HIPS can't be user-friendly.

What about Eset smart security then??

 

[Deleted member 178]

same, ESET = HIPS

Also it is the OP's choice to not include them , so just keep going.