Is the Gap, getting closer

Between free and paid secuirty products. It use to be very wide with free being considered cheap and ineffective for the most part with a limited selection. But it seems to me that that gap has closed and with the economy like it is, I see a day when the Gap itself may be totally closed.

 

There are free solutions that are even much better than the paid ones.

 

The gap does appear to be closing as far as detection abilities go. The paid for products and suites only seem to offer extra features which in some cases don't equate to extra protection. I have found myself recommending a couple of the free products to people where I never would have done that 3(+/-) years ago.

 

but still some not all free security programs has a catch if you know what i mean nagscreen pop ups ,tools bars well even pay solutions are giving this now the slow database updating,incomplete database like the free version os spyware doctor,the free prevx can not remove etc,etc,even malwarebytes's real time protection is turn off for the free version

 

There is some really good options for Free AV. But there is some paid versions of software that have the edge on others. Not all Paid AV's are better then the free ones out there but there still are some and I don't really seeing that changing.

 

agree

 

But atleast it guarantees the user that you are very much protected without spending money on some of the products.

We can have the better combos of free products that is even tough to beat by any paid security product available in the market.

 

Excellent points. Since I use Prevx free I for one enjoy the real-time protection. In the event it detects something I can simply delete the file or mark it as a FP. Granted not all users will want to do this, but at least for some people it is an option. With MS & Panda adding their free solutions to the mix it gives us even more options. Kudos to those mfg's that are keeping it free.

 

A cool thing about MSE (and likely Panda) is that the free AV definitions can be used for Forefront which strengthens their corporate offering due to a much larger user base.

 

not Avast Free no limitations really except it can update only once every 4 hours which is hardly something to complain about (v5 might change this to be even better)

 

this is true avast free has no limitations cool,but the paid version has some more extraz

 

yes of course

 

The truth is that quality freeware security applications have never been more prevalent, and yes, the gap is rapidly closing.
Avast and Avira state that their engine and signature base is the same for the paid and subscription versions.
For both, the differences are features and frequency of updates.
As for AVG, I'm not sure.
If your needs are more modest, on-demand scanners from Kaspersky, Bit Defender, Symantec, Eset, Trend Micro, and others offer detection and removal capabilities quite similar to their subscription counterparts- albeit without the real time scanner.
Either way, today's user can achieve a truly high level of protection with free applications.
Add to the mix freeware from Prevx, PC Tools' Threatfire, MBAM, A-Squared, and SAS plus several excellent freeware firewalls, sandboxed browsers, virtualization, and freeware imaging applications, and the scope of high quality and totally free security software choices makes me wonder if these companies might have done too good a job and in the process placed all but the absolute best of the subscription security applications on the endangered list.

I have fussed and cussed about the update debacle with Avira Personal and hopefully, that problem has been permanently fixed.
Despite that aggravation, I love the product and along with Avast and AVG, those "big three" continue to push the envelope and in turn, pressure the others to also improve.

I'm still waiting for a quality fourth free AV with real time protection and perhaps MSE, Comodo, Rising, Panda, or PC Tools (any or all) will elevate to the top tier.
In this game, the more, the merrier.

 

For several types of products, that "gap" didn't exist at all. Firewalls are one example. We've had good freeware firewalls for many years. There's been some very good HIPS that are/were free. There's been some very good free integrity checkers. One of the best web content filters is freeware. We've had free AVs for many years, some of which have always been good.

IMO, with regards to individual security apps, there hasn't been any gap of consequence. The only place I see any real "gap" is in combined security suites. Those have been payware for the most part.

 

Agree! However, firewalls & HIPS do not need constant signature updates, whereas AVs do. Thus, any organization that offers a free AV must ordinarily have SOME source of revenue in order to support its malware analysts who develop/update heuristics & signatures.

To my knowledge, all the *good/free* AVs are made available by companies that definitely DO have something to sell. Ergo, I regard all free AVs as adware -- even though they may not necessarily display actual ads.

 

In avast 5 you can change the update frequency, I set mine to once every hour but you can set it to update every minute if you want.

 

it has a hardcoded update interval no matter if u manually set it lower.

 

The gap doesn't exist related to protection, only related to what you want.

You will get what you need for free.
But sometimes you won't get what you want for free.

So either pay or be forever desperately unhappy because you don't have what you would like to have.

I think that's the point why suites are usually payware, they are for people who have no clue what they need. They just want to buy something to feel safe.

Cheers

 

I one had a person that installed 8 Different AV's all at once and purchased 7 of them. He figured the more he added the more protected he was.The computer took 7 and half minutes to boot up, And he still managed to have 12 DIFFERENT virus's on his computer.

 

At one time, I used a similar setup. I had 4 AVs, one resident and 3 for manual scanning. In addition, I had 3 anti-trojan and 3 anti-spyware, not to mention 2 software firewalls and a host of other security apps. The flawed logic behind this setup was based on the idea that any given piece of malware can be missed by one AV, AT, AS, etc, but it's much less likely that it can evade all of them. To an extent, the logic held true with known malware but came up short when confronted with newly released code. I never got infected with this setup but my system was very bogged down. Keeping everything up to date and getting along was an unending nightmare. It wasn't long afterwards that I learned of default-deny and began testing SSM and its abilities to replace AV based solutions. After a year of testing, I removed the last AV, AS, and AT from my systems. IMO, it's the best decision I ever made regarding a PC.

Users who want a more effective alternative to conventional AV based security have always had a quality selection of free software available. IMO, the only thing that keeps payware AVs in business is because the average user isn't aware that they have alternatives to them, conventional and otherwise.

 

Marketing, That's what keeps alot in business. And quite honestly the ones that have a grip on the corporate market will never disappear.

 

Those two phrases should be your next signature. Something like "antivirus zen philosophy!".



Protection wise, true, where's the gap? Avira and Avast alone beat many if not most of the paid AVs out there. Now you may want a better GUI, you may want something that suits your setup better, you may be a security hobbyist and you want an AV that simply strikes you for some reason other than detection, but yeah, there is no gap in protection.


If you just want something to protect you, there is no gap.

If you want something to protect you that will also protect your mind because of its logo, then you can pay.

In Europe:

Norton AV 2010 or Kaspersky 2010 (the top dogs): 50 euros ( USD 75).

Would i give that money for an AV? No.

Not to mention that for some reason, the "big boys" of AV industry, tend to think that just because the euro is stronger, the Europeans got some weird salary raise, so it's ok to charge 1:1 ratio to the dollar for the same product.

So, Norton AV in USA: 40 $
Norton AV in UE: 50 euros = 75 $. (euro-suckers).

Kaspersky in EU: 50 euros (75$)
Kaspersky in USA: 60 $.

Sure, suckers exist and will pay. I feel almost offended by the price management.

There is also another gap out there which is growing in favour of the freebies. The price/performance ratio gap. The "big dogs" don't seem to have lower their prices to the least, while the free ones have matched detection rates.

 

There was NO gap to begin with.

There is only a gap between average PC users and the more knowledgeable techies
It so happens that we are one of those 'knowledgeable techies'

In conclusion, it pays to know more about limitations and features of both freeware and payware and the do's and don'ts when using security software combinations.

 

FYI
buy.com is offering Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 3 User - KAV903121
US$24.89 + free shipping
http://www.buy.com/prod/kaspersky-anti-virus-2010-3-user/q/loc/105/212205120.html

their webpage states "limit (50) per customer" haha