ProDave Posted January 7, 2020 Share Posted January 7, 2020 Time was, AVAST was recommended as one of the best free anti virus options. Well it had an annoying habit of making you renew every year. and last time it "ran out" I could not get it to renew for free, every avenue pointed me towards a pay option. Alongside this, my computer has been complaining at critically low disk space for some time, but I could not imagine why. So today I took the decision so uninstall AVAST. Suddenly after doing so, I find I now have over 7GB of free disk space. In it's place I have installed AVG anti virus, also free and (so far) none of this registering nonsense. And I still have 6.9 GB of free disk space. So just a heads up if anyone else is struggling, it seems to be becoming awkward to renew, and it eats your disk space. Time for something different. And a quick search finds loads of people having the "fills up your disk" problem. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpmiller Posted January 7, 2020 Share Posted January 7, 2020 used AVG for quite a while and it went through a very slow and laggy phase. Currently (three or four years?) using Panda Free and can't fault it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted January 7, 2020 Author Share Posted January 7, 2020 1 minute ago, dpmiller said: used AVG for quite a while and it went through a very slow and laggy phase. Currently (three or four years?) using Panda Free and can't fault it. When did you install that? Panda came up on the list of recommendations, but when I tried today I could find no free option? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpmiller Posted January 7, 2020 Share Posted January 7, 2020 https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted January 7, 2020 Author Share Posted January 7, 2020 17 minutes ago, dpmiller said: https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/homeusers/solutions/free-antivirus/ Ha, they like to hide it. I went to Panda's website from a web search and it bought me to a list of pay options, with no mention of a free option and no links to anything but buy a paid version. Just out of interest, this is where a web search took me, and there is no mention of a free version https://www.pandasecurity.com/security-promotion/?reg=GB&lang=en&track=109054&campaign=dome1802&x-hideselection=true&coupon=30405065OFFER&option=yearly&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9ZzN6PXx5gIVGeDtCh3m6gQHEAAYASAAEgKUJPD_BwE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted January 7, 2020 Share Posted January 7, 2020 Going to be useful for anyone still running a Win 7 PC after the end of support in the next few months. I have two tiny fanless boxes here, sharing the same monitor etc, a Mint machine and a much-doctored Win7 Ultimate machine. both running on on very low power Kaby Lake processors (an "unsupported" i7-8550U in the case of the Win 7 box and a slightly slower i7-7500U for the Mint box). I'd love to get rid of the Win 7 box, but there are a handful of bits of software I regularly use/am very comfortable using, that won't (yet) run on Linux. The daft thing is that the much slower Mint box runs a LOT faster than the theoretically much faster Win 7 box, despite the fact that the Win 7 box now has 16 Gb of Ram, and both are running on SSDs. Still have my old a trusty Win 7 machine that I've had for years, too, although I don't turn it on much now, as it practically dims the lights with the power it draws. The fanless mini PC boxes are great, they idle at around 5 to 6 W, and run at 15 W maximum, whereas the old Win 7 box uses a couple of hundred watts or more, almost as much as everything else in the house added together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToughButterCup Posted January 7, 2020 Share Posted January 7, 2020 1 hour ago, ProDave said: [...] In it's place I have installed AVG anti virus [...] Used AVG, free, paid for and some of their add-ons on multiple platforms for many years (10+?) now. Never once even a hiccup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 7, 2020 Share Posted January 7, 2020 I have used AVG free for about 20 years. It was really good, allowed one to scan the whole network. Now, it constantly nags me with 'gifts' and how much they love me. On my notebook, I just rely on the built in Windows firewall and Defender. Can honestly say that I have not been bothered much by viruses (should have known that happy99.exe was more than pretty fireworks). Malware is a different issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike2016 Posted January 8, 2020 Share Posted January 8, 2020 Bitdefender AV is also free, bit more aggressive though. I just use windows built in security now on windows 10 and keep patches up to date though. Delete any suspicious mails without reading and watch what you click on in your browser....also recommend a good firewall between you and the internet - buying Ubiquiti secure gateway to complement the AP Pro access point I already have from their range. Plan to segregate all my connected wireless devices from each other (alarm, cctv, solar pv etc). https://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted January 8, 2020 Author Share Posted January 8, 2020 In something like 30+ years of using computers I have only ever had an AV program find ONE threat, and that was in an email that I would never have opened anyway because it looked so suspicious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oz07 Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 Since I've had mac laptop I've never bothered with anti virus. Aren't they supposed to be a bit more secure or less targeted? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 10, 2020 Share Posted January 10, 2020 34 minutes ago, Oz07 said: Aren't they supposed to be a bit more secure or less targeted All is fine in the golden garden https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-software/mac-viruses-list-3668354/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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