Any good FREE ani-virus and/or Anti-spyware utilities?

This is a question that gets asked a lot. And the answer is a big YES. Let's jump right in and start with Anti-Virus utilities first.

Free Avti-Virus Utilities

Viruses are a thing PC users have had to deal with for quite some time now. It's just "the nature of the beast". There are a number of Anti-virus (AV) utilities out there you can pay for of which I would consider Kaspersky Anti-Virus the best over all, but for those of us who can't afford it, like me, we have a couple of options. The top pick on my list would be Grisoft AVG Free.

I used to be a die-hard Norton AV user years ago until I tried AVG Free. AVG Free uses very little resources, updates daily (very common to update multiple times a day), and catches just about any virus I have come across, even unknown ones. I would still recommend looking at the prices to buy it though. As of writing this post, AVG for Windows costs just $39 for a 2 year subscription (updates for two years) for one computer and the price rate goes down for more computers.

Other good free AV options would be Avast! and AntiVir. These two are good but they still can't compete with AVG Free and it's ability to heuristically detect unknown viruses.

Free Anti-Spyware Utilities

Another "beast" we PC users tend to deal with is Spyware. You may know you have it but most of the time you don't. Key loggers, annoying pop-ups that occur without even opening your browser, etc. What a pain.

I will say even though you can catch a lot with free Anti-Spyware (AS) utilities, nothing beats a good "paid for" one. Namely PC Tools' Spyware Doctor. Consistently at, or near, the top of most critics lists for best AS utility. But I digress...Back to the freebies!

I usually advise PC users to have a few of the free Anti-Spyware utilities installed and used regularly as it seems some applications catch some things where others don't and vice-versa. The three free ones at the top of my list would be Microsoft's Windows Defender, Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, and last but not least Spybot - Search and Destroy. I would recommend installing all three and running them on a weekly basis depending on how much internet time your computer sees.

Windows Defender does an OK job compared to the others and is much better than nothing. It's updated monthly through Windows update and can be run manually. Ad-Aware is a pretty good utility as it catches a good number of common spyware bugs, regular updates through the app itself, and it also has plug-ins for other utilities such as a VX2 Cleaner, etc. Search and Destroy is a little better than the two previous selections. It is updated regularly through the utility itself, catches a very large number of spyware pests, and dives a little deeper into your system to find the problems that might plague your system.

Well, I hope this has been informative. Please feel free to comment with your picks as I am always willing to try new utilities...especially if they are free ones worth trying. ;o)