Should I purchase a paid antivirus for my personal computer?

There are many free antivirus softwares available and they take a better care of your PC against malware and virus. But the paid antivirus has a few advantages and disadvantages.

• The antivirus firm needs to maintain the database of the new viruses found and they also need to keep it updated. This requires a lot of effort and capital. Free antivirus programmes may not provide the real time security. However it can also be noted that none of the antivirus database is perfect up to the minute. Some developers may not update the database at all. Thereby you will end up paying for no actual service. One needs to check the reliability of the firm.


• For most of the practical purposes, you will need nothing more than Microsoft Security Essentials to be safe from malware, if you are running Windows 7, Windows Vista or XP. For Windows 8 there is Windows Defender which replaces Microsoft Security Essentials.


• The problem with antivirus programmes is that hackers or cyber criminals these days are smart enough to test their malware against all popular antivirus programmes. When a new virus is detected, it takes weeks to write an antivirus to it and update it. So where is the point of opting for an expensive antivirus?


• A big corporate may need an expensive antivirus because their system may crash due to stupid mistakes employees tend to engage in, like opening dubious attachments, visiting vicious websites etc.

The decision on what kind of antivirus you need is entirely dependent on your way of working. If you have typically small industry and employ a small number of employees you can keep watch on, or it is your personal PC at home - you would be safer with a free antivirus or even Microsoft Essentials explained above. But if you need an antivirus for a fairly larger firm, you may need to go for a paid antivirus. Research the available programmes and decide depending on your requirements.

Your friends are right as free antivirus doesn't provide the overall protection from all the latest threats available on your system and let suppose if they provide free of cost the overall protection then no one would have purchased a paid antivirus for their computer.

Free antivirus doesn't work well. Though they get updates but by updating the free antivirus it's just waste of the internet data. If you have important document on your computer and you want to protect it from the latest threats then you must go and purchase a paid antivirus. There are many antivirus available on online ecommerce sites as well would be available at the computer stores located in your area. One of the demerit of the paid antivirus is that you've to update in on regular time interval for getting the protection against the latest threats. These days the Quick Heal Technologies are considered the best for buying the paid antivirus.

If you own a personal PC and don't have any big pile of computers then you should go for free antivirus. There are many free antivirus which are available for 30-days free trial period. These antiviruses can remove most of the viruses but not really any major ones like trojans. For trojan type viruses, it will be somewhat difficult to remove them with free antivirus. And if you find any free one which boasts of removing them, then its obvious you will also loose the file infected by it. However, with some best paid antivirus programs like QuickHeal, you won't face any such problem. This handy virus removal kit repairs the virus infected file while completely removing the virus infection.

You can have a look at these best free antivirus programs which are easily available for download:

Avast Free Antivirus
ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall
Panda Cloud Antivirus Free
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition
Avira Free Antivirus