In his article Why I dumped Norton Antivirus for McAfee VirusScan, Robert Vamosi comments on the resons that he moved from Norton's virus software to McAfee. I admit that I have also changed software allegance this year as well. However, I moved from both of those to a different virus scanner. I had Norton installed at home and McAfee installed at work.
One day I was at home and was looking at the virus database and saw it was woefully out of date. Fearing for the safety of my computer, I decided I would update the database. Unfortunatelly, when I went to do so, I discovered that in order to get the latest update, I had to pay for it. Incensed, I decided to check out the offerings from other people. McAfee was the first I check out. I used it at work, so I was familiar with it. There I found that the prices were about the same, but I still was not satisfied. I knew that while these two were the market leaders there may be other players out there. So I went looking.
Well, I found something. AVG. The price was right (FREE), I could get downloads of the virus database for free, I could use it at home as well as work, and I could have it run a scheduled test everynight if I wanted to. All the things that I used the others for anyway. Then it had another feature that I didn't know about. It would scan my email before I sent it, as well as email that I got. BONUS!
I cound't see any catch, and it looked like they kept it up to date on a regular basis. So I made the jump. I've been using it now for a number of months. It's been nice. There have been a couple of times I've gotten emails from people that have had viruses, but have I gotten infected? Nope. Do I feel comfortable with it? Yes. It does exactly what I wanted.
Mr Vamosi says,
REALLY, IT'S SCANDALOUS that these companies charge not only for support but also for subscriptions to the latest antivirus signature files. I say charge the corporate customers for these services, but not home users. Besides breeding goodwill (and increased loyalty) among customers, free support would aid the worthy cause of keeping all systems on the Internet virus-free.
That describes my attitude exactly! I suggest that if you are getting tired of shelling out money for updates to software that you have purchased to keep your computer clean, then try AVG. Make you dissatisfaction known with your consumer dollars.
Try it! It's better then McAfee and Norton.
