Best free antivirus for an old computer?

[Ender17]

I'm setting up an old Gateway for someone with the following specs
AMD K7-950 CPU
256MB PC133 RAM
10GB HDD

put Windows XP on it and it ran pretty good, but seems a lot slower now after putting Avast home edition on it
is there a better free antivirus for an old computer?

[Malakai]

Avira is the best free one, and the slimmest paid one. I use the premium version on my pc with a free 3 month serial that you can refresh anytime. I install the free one on customer PCs.

Its one of the few I can set to only scan files on write for the auto-protect, and not have 20 spyware/email/web/misc additional things running. It also has good detect rates and scans fast.
I loved nod32 but it just has to much crap. Avira reminds me of old symantec corp when it was slim and perfect.

[ephekt]

Avira is probably your best bet for freeware.

I loved nod32 but it just has to much crap.

Care to expand, or at least explain why this matters? The footprint is still minuscule.

Also, avcomparatives scores NOD32 higher than Avira, and shows that it gets fewer false positives.

[Ender17]

Originally Posted by Malakai

Avira is the best free one, and the slimmest paid one. I use the premium version on my pc with a free 3 month serial that you can refresh anytime. I install the free one on customer PCs.

Its one of the few I can set to only scan files on write for the auto-protect, and not have 20 spyware/email/web/misc additional things running. It also has good detect rates and scans fast.
I loved nod32 but it just has to much crap. Avira reminds me of old symantec corp when it was slim and perfect.

Avira! that's what I was trying to think of
too many with A
AVG, Avast, Avira
thanks, gonna try it out

[Ender17]

Originally Posted by ephekt

Care to expand, or at least explain why this matters? The footprint is still minuscule.

yeah not sure what he's talking about there
that's what I run on my main machine and it's the least obtrusive, smallest antivirus I've used

[Malakai]

Nod32 had several parts that could not be disabled, or the program would compain & auto reactivate them on reboot. Email scanner, "web protection", ect.
I just want a scan I can run at max detection settings every month or so, and an auto-protect that only scans new files on right. My machine is a monster, but I prefer not to waste cycles on av features enthusiasts who don't just download every piece of shit program in sight don't need.

Avira is just perfect and tiny. The free version just opens an ad every 2 days, the premium version I use is jesus.

[ephekt]

I have all that crap turned off, still get a green icon and it doesn't reset on boot. Not sure what you did differently.

Anyway, just curious since the av benchmarks tend to disagree with you.

[Malakai]

Av benchmarks? That roundup they do every year for detection rates, avira always does pretty good. I used symantec corp for years, it was not #1 in detection either, but it was good and slim and just did what I wanted. Avira does it better tho and its free.

No argument though that nod32 is probably the best overall. As I install almost no software im not extremely familiar with, get from trusted sources, and never open attachments unless work or school sent it, ect. Even then avira still scans your email attachments, it just doesnt require a whole other module running for it like nod32.

Strangely enough I hear norton 2009 was actually quite good as well!

[ShaithEatery]

i know kaspersky came out with an antivirus made specifically with netbooks in mind, meaning it's much less system resource-intensive. haven't seen any benchmarks on it, but that might be one to look at too (not free though, even comes on a 1 gig thumb drive since netbooks don't have cdroms)

[ytzombe]

Is Avira better than Symantec 10? I really don't want to go to 11, it looks like a clown puked all over the desktop. And it's slow as shit. But I wonder if Symantec will make a version 10 for Windows 7?