In another move closer to an open-source society… I unshackled from the grip of Norton Anti-virus. (Which was only ever a knee jerk reaction to virus mania on my machine over a year ago – boy that was fun!!!)

After a bit of research I chose to go with Avira AntiVir which has been great.
Daily scans with the ever cute Luke Filewalker has been making me happy for a few weeks now.

Many online discussions say that uninstalling Nortons has also been the biggest performance lifter on their computer. I can also add that despite having only just run a Norton scan on my machine and a Spy Bot Destroyer – Avira AntiVir still picked up stacks of Proxy Agents, a couple of Trogens and plenty of Spy bots. Now it hums away updating every night and scanning every lunch time.

I’m a convert.

One great resource that I found while doing my research was this “independent” anti virus comparison lab – I believe they are Australian:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/
And here is their comparative report from Feb 2007
http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2007_02.php

Avira AntiVir comes up well in the report as does AVG and AVAST … as does Norton – but it is the only one you have to pay for.

Links to some online scanners:
Http://www.bitdefender.co.uk/
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.pandasoftware.com/
http://onlinescan.avast.com/