Antivirus Program Articles

Pros and Cons of Free Antivirus Programs- When choosing a free antivirus program you need to know the pros and cons of free antivirus programs so you can make sure you are getting the best free antivirus software. Pros and Cons of Free Antivirus Programs!

There are free antivirus programs and similar programs for which one pays that provide various levels of protection for one's computer. At some point, the question may arise of whether one should pay for such protection or whether free antivirus software is sufficient for one's needs. This article considers the pros and cons of free antivirus programs.

Pros

A free program that helps you become familiar with a software manufacturer's approach to the world of antivirus protection and provides an easy way to move into a paid software package if and when you want to is how some people view a free antivirus program. Others see it as a way to try out a bunch of alternatives to see what works for them, while still others find a high enough quality product and are able to use it skillfully enough to really have the sense of having gotten something for nothing.

More than one person has invested in an antivirus program with great reviews only to find that it had certain incompatibilities on his or her machine or with certain programs that he or she needed to run. Since they don't give refunds for situations like this, testing the waters is useful.

There are free trials for the paid products, too, but even if you plan to purchase, you may not want to use these for various reasons. One reason is that you may have to set up an account and give a name and email address, or even a phone number and more. With at least one antivirus software manufacturer, the free download has a mandatory opt-out purchase agreement: unless you tell them otherwise within your 30-day free trail period, your credit card will be charged at the end of it without further communication. Free trials are often free of all this.

Another pro is screening for big problems that may be peculiar to your system. The experts can report that an antivirus software program is of good quality. But a few users may find that it crashes their computer. Nobody may ever know why, but discovering this type of incompatibility with a free version that can be readily uninstalled and that you have no regrets about moving on from is a lot less painful than if you just paid f premium price for a software program.

Cons

As we said, the biggest and most obvious pro of a free antivirus program is that it's free. But let's take a moment and put this in context. The program is only free if it actually works and works well. If the program:

• is so slow that it makes using your computer nearly impossible

• is not compatible with a browser that you need to use

• continually throws up false positives, interrupting your work when there is nothing wrong or

• fails to catch the malware it was designed to protect you from

then the cost in time, aggravation, or—in the last case—in money to recover your data means that the choice isn't free. Add to that the time that you spend researching the best free option in the first place, the time you spend setting it up without the benefit of tech support to answer your questions, and free antivirus programs begin to look like quite an investment.

Other cons include the limited range of choices. Unsurprisingly, there just isn't as much good quality material to choose from in the realm of free software as there is in paid software. Another is that the version may not be compatible with your operating system. Additionally, the freeware is likely to be the lowest level of security software – the antivirus package alone, without the malware/spyware/identity protection package that may accompany paid versions, meaning that even if it works splendidly, you're still not covered for all the types of nasties that can attack your computer. And the free antivirus software is not guaranteed to play nice with software you may get to perform these other functions.

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Computer Assoc.