Anti Virus

[#1]

Quote from: BryanP

I use Avast It updates automactily but you have to update manualy when a new version is available You also have to regestister every 12 months which is OK but they always want you to upgrade to the paid version but as long as you press the right button it is still free and is the best availble at this moment in time

Hmm.... I don`t remember having to "register" AVAST.... nor having to re-register...  (I could be  wrong.... just don`t remember doing it )..... that is one reason why I dumped AVIRA.. and their constant NAG screens every day, interrupting what you do....
No... AVAST does not need any more intervention, once you have installed and set it up...  Except if you decide to "update" to the latest offering... Updates to the virus vault, are done "ad lib"... so may get two in one day, or none, or three... but you will always know, as a little pop up window appears... ( may be you can stop that... never bothered me )

[#2]

I use the free version of Avast, and have had no problems with it, although they do now ask you to register - or at least they did when I renewed it, but although they ask for your email, I've haven't had any spam from them.
  You can change the time that the notification popups stay on the screen in 'settings' - I changed my virus update one from the 20sec default, to 5secs - it 's less irritating!

[#3]

I'm reasonably satisfied with Avast. It has a game-mode which prevents it from popping up notifications when a full-screen app is running (i.e. video playback or games) but you can also enable this manually so that it runs silently.
I had previously been running MSE, but recently had noticed it become more of a resource hog. On my quad core desktop the issue was negligible (although you could see it running at 100% CPU for several seconds on occasion) but my netbook with a single core Atom CPU was practically unusable. Since moving to Avast the performance issues are gone. You can choose which features get installed, which they term as "shields" - i.e. one for scanning files, one for scanning web browsing, one for scanning email, one for behaviour monitoring etc.
I'm not sure how effective web scanning is though, given that it can only scan HTTP traffic. What is there to stop a compromised server (possibly a site that you ordinarily visit every day) serving up malware/exploits via an SSL connection?