What's your favorite antivirus?

3nd · 27 Jul 2023

MorganBilbo said:

3nd: First of all. Common sense is not very common. And there are more people with a PC that need an A/V than those who rely only on common sense.
Second of all. Hackers or thieves are far more common than common sense. LOL

ok yea...
not gonna entertain a 2 year old thread by a poster that left windows for linux (

) cause he couldn't come right ,anymore ...just threw in my 2cents

MorganBilbo · 27 Jul 2023

It don't matter to me how old a thread is. If it's a subject that can be applied today, it's worth reading.
Everyone has an opinion. I gave mine. You gave yours. Whether we use Linux or Windows or a Mac. Use of an A/V is subjective and each one of us has a right to express an opinion. What was good back in Nov 21, may not be for today. Defender is a pretty darn good freebie and just because it's a MS product, don't make it bad or "inferior". But IMHO if you are willing to spend money, ESET is a great choice. And with it, you don't need all the other bloated stuff. Like Malwarebytes, and the multitude of "goody stuff" available.

TairikuOkami · 27 Jul 2023

MorganBilbo said:

Hackers or thieves are far more common than common sense.

AV will not stop a hacker, the only effective protection against hackers is not to upset any.
Protection against malware is easy, because malware works as ABC, you just break the chain.

User2468 · 27 Jul 2023

What's an anti-virus? For that matter, what's a virus? Haven't seen one of those since my Windows 98se days. And at that I was running AVG.

For brevity, anti-virus software, especially now-a-days is a load of crap and it's massively overbloated with crap. I use the aforementioned Sandboxie but the classic version. The Plus version I found to be way too overbloated and full of nonsense.

There exist software that will freeze your current configuration in place in like a virtual environment and upon reboot all goes back to normal. That would be well suitable for a granny proof computer or maybe a server. You can of course whitelist certain paths for write capability so data sticks after reboot.

I'd rather buy this then some anti-virus software. There exists a free trial to try it out. Note it can be cumbersome and you'll need to whitelist certain paths. It's not for everyone. Especially if you're a gamer. Then you have to whitelist the Steam or Epic Games, etc directories and AppData folders and whatnot. Where this software shines is again, for a granny proof computer. Or some kiosk in a library or something.