Laptop security (free)
 

Would like your opinions on these three. Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials and Avast 2014. Running windiws 8 or 8.1 thanks in advance.

I'm not that familiar with Windows 8 or 8.1 but the built in security (Microsoft's own) seems to be OK. So, MSE and/or Defender should do the trick.

However, in my own tests with free AV software on older MS OSes, Avast did better than MSE and AVG when I tried to deliberately infect a computer with the MET Police scam. As Avast is free it may be worth considering if you're not happy with MS's own offerings. Hope that helps ;)

I tend to use AVG as a free antivirus

I use MSE on my home pc due to low disc I/O access on SSD raid's, but I would also consider AVAST, I sell AVG to clients at work (cloud managed poop) and would sooner install MSE or Avast, on our own machines...better lower resource usage.

I've always used Microsoft Security Essentials on my Win7 machines, never had any problems.

Windows Defender is the one for Windows 8 - used it on my sisters computer and again no problems.

If anyone I know gets infected, MalwareBytes is good to use.

Thanks for all your replies. :ok:

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