Free Anti-Virus are reserved for individuals. They are a good showcase for companies that develop them. These software are nevertheless of good quality and are sufficient for a personal use and and they must remain efficient because users will be adamant on this type of product and the company assumed too much risk to offer a product too "lite".

Lots of home users are frightened into buying antivirus from Symantec or similar, but Norton AV (and the others) have become a huge memory-sapping beasts and are often the reason for so many of the problems that non-techy home users have.

If I'm installing an OS and Anti-Virus for someone, I use Avast - its free, has never let a 'nasty' through in my experience and is easy to understand for home users.

In the office we use NOD32, which is exellent.

I think it can as Mcaffee and Norton are just shocking! AVG all the way!

In Germany Avira and Zone Alarm are the most used free Anti Virus and Fire wall software products. They quite allright for personal use.. But not as good as SYMC, Kaspersky and co.

In this field, there will be new generation of AV in the market soon.

It will work no longer with Virus Database... I am waiting for it desperately.

Good point of view Benjamin. A very unpleasant thing to me is a an AV that keeps poping messages up.

I read a review this weekend in Maximum PC magazine, that gave these results, in order of best to worst performing:

Norton
ESET
Avira
MSE - Microsoft!
Avast!
McAfee
TrendMicro
BitDefender
Panda
Comodo

The summary: ' ... ESET remains a favourite, the free Microsoft Security essentials is a great solution for cheapskates, that McAfee has redeemed itself and the Trend Micro just plain sucks'

I always recommend AVG Free. At home we are now using the full internet security version (3 user bundle) which costs me money, but not much. Less than I pay for my car insurance.

I use free anti-virus on my personal computer and I have no problem with it. I use the microsoft Security Essentials. For a personal using i think that the free anti-virus is very good and they have good results at the test performed by different labs. Payable Anti-virus are dedicated to companies with Network deployment. 

@Xavier: I need to test it next time, when my Norton 360 runs out..

Where do I get the MS Security essentials from, do you have a link for me?

Do you know, How much of the PC resources get blocked by MS Sec. Essentials.?

Norton 360 makes lots of blocking.

@Ritchie: you may try www.ninite.com, it includes Microsoft essentials.

Microsoft essentials is VERY good - I have just installed it on my son's pc. Quick, painless and simple to administer. Thumbs-up from me!

I used many of them.. At a time they all get crappy.. Some though improve dramatically ( like Norton).. but kaspersky was always my first choice