PC Tools PC Tools AntiVirus™ 3.1 Free Edition

After using this underrated gem for the past seven months I don't think I am far off the mark when I state that PC Tools Anti Virus may possibly be the best free anti-virus program available for the normal home user. Having tried and used many free anti-virus programs over the years, including AVG, Avast!, and Antivir, I have found none that are as easy to use or as effective as PC Tools AntiVirus. Installation is easy and configuration is a snap because of its easy to understand interface. Virus definitions and the software are updated quite frequently, and you are notified of this by a simple pop up from the system tray that allows you to apply them immediately.PC Tools Anti Virus is also light on system resources. On my system it only uses 5.6 megs of ram when running its IntelliGuard in the background, 18 megs when doing a quick system scan, and 31 megs when doing a full system scan. By comparison, Firefox uses 40 megs just starting up. It is very unobtrusive and has never interfered with any of my internet applications.Conclusion: Get it (its now at version 4.0), try it, and form your own opinion. For me, PC Tools AntiVirus is part of my frontline defences, along with SpyBot S&D 1.5, ThreatFire, and Comodo Firewall.

I like testing freebies and was interested to see another option on the list and put PC Tools AntiVirus on my test machine. It didn't stay there long, It's a fully featured anti virus program with a nice interface, but it has enormous system requirements, taking between four and five times as much RAM as a similar avast! or AVG installation. It's also highly unsatisfactory in day to day use interfering notably with some programs and giving a very irritating Internet experience by frequently bringing FireFox and IE to a complete halt. As it stands the bits are all there, but in operation it's badly flawed and until they sort out its memory hog tendencies and the browser problem, it isn't worth considering as there are at least four or five far better freebies out there : avast!, AVG, Antivir, Comodo or AOL Active Virus Shield are far superior to this lump.