Replies

Hi Fred,

I’ve been a long time admirer (since the Langa List days). In this case, your test procedure was sound, but may have missed the mark so to speak. I have tried all of the free AV products you tested (and more). My search for a truly light-weight AV product was spawned by the fact that I was (until very recently) running some computers that were quite old. They worked just fine for most purposes, but didn’t have the CPU power of today’s machines. I did everything I could to eliminate automatic start-up programs, boost RAM, regularly defrag the HDD, etc. to keep them running as nimble as possible. What finally caused me to abandon those machines however, were the AV programs.

What I found happening over and over again, was that the AV product seemed to run great when it was first installed, but it was the second, third and fourth boot-up of the computer (on the second, third and fourth day after install) that was the REAL problem. In point of fact, it was the automatic virus definition update process (which always occurs during the boot-up sequence) that bogged the machine down to a standstill. Generally, the CPU would max out, essentially locking up the machine for minutes until the update process was complete. By ignoring the update process in your tests, you merely duplicated my first days success, while ignoring my ongoing tribulations.

I eventually chose to take my chances and run my oldest machines without ANY real time AV protection (ie, ClamWin fits the bill). Boot time was only about 1 minute-30 seconds. I just couldn’t take the aggravation of a multi-minute boot-up waiting for new virus definitions to load. Now that I have more up-to-date machines, I’ve found that I like MSE best over all the rest. AVG, Avast, Avira and Comodo seem to have really gotten bloated over the years. MSE is effective, unassuming, light on resources, and… it’s free! What’s not to like?

Jim (Murfreesboro, TN)