Advise on free AV software

At this moment, I'm not using the ewido guard because it use some resources and I'm waiting for the new version hoping that this will be very improved...

 

There three products that get the most mention in the free AV space:

Antivir: Most recent tests (AV Comparatives) show it to have the best measured detection of the three, but they use an inconvenient updating method. Users complain of busy servers.

Avast: This is the one that magazine editors like, and I like it the best of the three as well. Almost as good as Antivir at measured detection. Has a new feature where it scans stuff as it comes off the web. This may require adjustments to your firewall rules. If I remember correctly the only limitation is that it is not possible to schedule a scan, but the updating is automatic and hands free, so to speak.

Grisoft: Somewhat worse at detection than the other two, especially with trojans or othere things that do not fit the traditional definition of a virus. Very easy to use and set up. It both allows automatic updating and scheduled scans. The HALPC help desk gives this one out and they tell me in actual use it is keeping machines virus free. Uses a lot of memory, but seems to run fast even on old hardware. Probably the most widely used of the three, mainly due to convenience.

 

I have tried many of the ones listed in previous posts, and I keep going back to Avast.

 

Just my 2 cents an personal opinions:

AVG: Easy to use an quick easy updates, however a memory hog. I would not recommend it for older machines with limited memory.

AVAST: Quiet a few people like this one. Found it also to be a memory hog. It also placed operating files in the TEMP directory, which were cumbersome to delete if one wanted to do so. I would not recommend this one for older machine with limited memory either.

AntiVir/PE: Your basic virus protection program. This one appears to do an adequate job, an is light on memory usage. The updater however is abysmal an updates are hard to acquire, due to lousy servers, automatic update capability does not appear to be available with this one either. The update files are rather large also. This would be a good program to use for older machines, if it were not for the updater situation.

Thanks
Wildman