Just like the viruses, antivirus software is also very competitive. There are fierce battle among the premium antivirus makers such as Norton, Kaspersky, McAfee, Trend Micro system, Bit defender and a few more to increase their market share. People easily get caught up when they decide to buy a premium antivirus because they cannot differentiate between two vendors. Interestingly, some antivirus software is free, which confused the new customers even more.
Target audience of this post is normal Internet users who want to buy personal antivirus software for their home PCs and laptops.
Many users hesitate paying for antivirus software and they end up using the free software. In this post, I am not going to argue with whether you should use paid or free antivirus. You can expect to read about what you need to look for when you buy the best software to protect your personal computer from viruses. Here are the 4 simple things you need to look for when choose antivirus software:
- What matter most to the users is the ability of the software to detect antivirus and delete or quarantine it.
- The antivirus should not slow down the normal performance of the users.
- Easy user-interface so as user can start a full scan with once click and custom scan with two clicks.
- The software should not cause or conflict with the users’ existing applications.
Unfortunately, every antivirus vendor claims that they offer best solutions in the world without sacrificing the performance of the users’ computer. But that is not true. Many of the well-known viruses detecting software makes PC running slower than normal. This is because how they were designed and keep an eye open to the existing threads, traffic and applications running in the system.
The truth about antivirus software is that there is no such thing as top antivirus because most of the vendors regularly updates their virus definition database regularly and if you are a premium subscriber you will already be equipped latest update automatically. Depending on how the antivirus software was designed to detect malicious codes and activities, each piece of software have its pros and cons. Some has intuitive user interface and does not slow down the PC while some are resource hungry (requires more CPU cycles, memory, power etc.).
When you go shopping antivirus software, think about their simple things:
- Is this antivirus has any known issue such as PC performance degradation and conflicts with software.
- Is the antivirus has intuitive user interface because no one likes complicated settings.
- Is this antivirus has a mobile version that you can buy with discount price when you buy the antivirus.
Remember that there are a number of good antiviruses out there and you do your own research based on the tips that I have outlined above. After researching, try out the trial version and if you are not satisfied with a particular product try another one. Keep researching and trying out different vendors until you find the one that match your needs.As a home PC users, you need to know that antivirus is just one type of malware. To keep your computer safre, you can laearn about various types of common malware.
