The best free antivirus systems: test and comparison

Windows XP and Vista come equipped with a firewall but in no case an antivirus. It is therefore up to the user to assure their security from viruses with the installation of a commercial or free antivirus system. Here, we have reviewed 7 free systems that are just as good as commercial offerings. Most products reviewed actually use the same software engine as commercial products.

We have selected these utilities as they have some common points. They are firstly free for personal use and without a time limit. All try to eradicate first generation viruses as well as Trojans, rootkits, worms, malware and other “wonderful” installations that destroy or make useless your computer.

All of these programs allow for real time protection, with a free and regular upgrade to your virus definitions. The other comparison points are numerous and vary from one product to another, with the Web shield for example that protects you when you surf, the email shield to analyze your emails and attachments, the instant messenger and P2P shield… Some products go a long way by offering as an addition, proactive protection against unknown threats and the inspection of units connected to LAN and WLAN that you generally only find on top of the line commercial products.

We have a test set of viruses, but most of these were detected without a lot of problems by the antivirus, making it a mere formality to get rid of these “pests”. So that we could get an idea of the detection potential of each product, better then to apply a comparison of their performance with AV-Comparatives. This includes commercial programs, but the engines used are often the same in the free versions. Besides, AV-Comparatives offers new threats giving you the possibility of adjusting the tests to the type of attack you want to see (macro, virus, Trojans, backdoors…).