The Best Antivirus Software 2011

Antivirus companies have quite a difficult time, because there is big money in viruses.  It is always an arms race between virus makers and Antivirus companies.  The creators of viruses are almost always ahead, and can create viruses that bypass current Antivirus programs.  The other problem is that virus makers are organized and smarter than ever.  It can take a virus company days or even weeks (depending on the virus and the company) to be able to detect a brand new virus or even a variant of an existing one.  Well the problem is that tens of thousands of these variants and new viruses are created every day!

The solution to this is called Heuristics.  Heuristics is the ability of the program to detect what looks and acts like a virus without knowing for certain that it is a virus.  This means the program can detect and stop a virus that has just been created today!

Antivirus companies quality and percentage of detection varies from year to year.  The top dog this year may be behind the curve next year, due to the constant changing dynamic of viruses.  I have tested multiple of the leading Antivirus programs, and I can say that currently I would buy Eset Nod 32 Antivirus.  This is for 3 main reasons…
1 – Advanced Heuristics on this programs seems to be more advanced than any other that I have tested.
2- Speed – Eset is smart enough to back off it’s scanner, when it sees you are trying to use a whole lot of memory or CPU.  This means that the normal issue of your Antivirus making your computer slow is almost not an issue.  The full computer scanner also run very fast.
3- Detection Rate – This program in my tests (and many third-party tests) has proven to detect things that many others miss.

What if you do not want to pay money for Antivirus or do not need the most advanced Antivirus?
Nowadays many companies offer free versions of their Antivirus programs.  These programs usually do not have all the features of the full program, but they do provide enough protection to protect your computer from most threats.

Top Free Antivirus Applications (no particular order)
1 – Avast Free Antivirus
2 – Avira AntiVir Personal
3- Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition
4- AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
5- Microsoft Security Essentials