Four Free Anti-Virus Software Tools

I've been studying four free anti-virus software tools. Here they are listed in alphabetical order: Avast, Avira, AVG and Trend Micro Housecall.

So far, Avast is my favorite. It is my favorite for these reasons:

1. Easy to use interface.
2. When you click on scan, you are given many different scans to choose from.
3. You can do a quick scan or a full scan. The full scan takes me about 4 hours to complete.
4. Amongst the scan options is the option to scan upon booting up. This is advantageous as it seems to me that it is impossible for malware to move around and hide if it is not yet running. Therefore, being able to schedule a scan the next time you boot up your computer adds a nice little extra dimension to your virus protection.
5. One of the tools that Avast offers is a tool to update all the software on your system. In other words, it will scan your system for software that has known security holes and will then provide you a means to update this software. I'd call this tool a comprehensive software updater, just to give it a name.
6. You can easily disable Avast for 10 minutes or more by right-clicking on the little Avast icon in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. This is handy if you want to resolve a software conflict or you want your entire computer to yourself without your anti-virus protection running.

Overall, Avast is my favorite anti-virus tool, though the other Anti-Virus software tools seem quite good.

One thing worth noting is that your Anti-Virus tool will probably take hours to scan your computer, regardless of how you run it.

Ed Abbott