What To Look For When Buying Antivirus Software

Like everything else of consumer goods, all antivirus software is not the same. Some are good and some are mediocre. The choices are broad and wide. Really there are only two factors to think of when it comes to which antivirus software to buy: how user-friendly it is and how effective it is. This is what it should be doing:

• Easy enough to install and use

• The software should effectively seek out and identify virus threats, as well as clean or isolate infected files.

• There should be understandable reporting available for each scan and plenty of help support available, so you can be well-informed of the software’s activities and capabilities.

Below are the crieteria we at Top 10 Antivirus Programs use to evaluate antivirus programs:

Ease of Use

• The software should be easy to install and configure. If you need to use the interface to change settings, it should be insightful and non-threatening to beginners.

• The best antivirus software is the kind you simply install on your system and then let it do its work.

Effective at Identifying Viruses and Worms

• The best antivirus software identifies infected files quickly through realtime scanning, searching for viruses in a multitude of sources, including email, instant message applications, web browsing, etc.

• Scanning speed is also important.

• A slow antivirus software will tend to interfere with your work or gaming, and if it’s very slow or you are particularly impatient, you might have the tendency to stop or pause the scan, rendering the software useless.

Effective at Cleaning or Isolating Infected Files

• Truly capable antivirus software thoroughly cleans, deletes or quarantines infected files, keeping them from spreading throughout the hard drive or network.

Activity Reporting

• Antivirus programs should give immediate notification of viruses found by realtime scanners and should provide an easy to read report of scan results, including what was found and what was done with infected files.

Feature Set

• A well-rounded feature set allows antivirus software to provide absolute protection. The best programs are those that offer a wide variety of tools, from basic realtime scanning to more advanced heuristic scanning and script blocking.

• When it comes to virus protection, the more options the better.

• Many of the best antivirus packages now include multiple protection schemes at no extra cost. These include antispyware, antimalware, rootkit detection, parental controls and email screening, as many of the new threats are not literally viruses, but rather a variety of malware.