I've been using Avira's Antivir Premium for awhile now and I'm beginning to think that other than a softwall firewall and router, Avira Premium is all that's needed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do once I can't find any more free 6 month offers for it, though.
I may have to make either a purchasing decision or choose between Avira 9 free (once they iron out the engine problems) or Avast Home, with Dr. Web's Cureit Live CD as a free on demand backup.
I still have the free on-demand versions of Super Anti-Spyware, Malwarebytes, and A-squared installed, as well as Spybot S&D and an old version of Ad-Aware. I rarely check them against Avira Premium.
Along with Web of Trust for Firefox and Adblock filters, the only other security feature I use is a HOSTS file from MVPS.org along with disabling the DNS service. I'm not even sure that the HOSTS file is even necessary. I also run Hijackthis every month or so and compare the log file to an older one to see if there are any differences, and if so, are they recognizable?
I've been using Avira's Antivir Premium for awhile now and I'm beginning to think that other than a softwall firewall and router, Avira Premium is all that's needed.
I run Avira Premium as well, and I'm very happy with it too, but I still believe Malwarebytes Antimalware is a very useful addition to any antivirus. They specialize in baddies that AVs generally either pay less attention to, or have trouble removing, and the MBAM team really is on top of currently 'in the wild' malware
There are even numerous examples of Avira (as well as Symantec, and no doubt other AV's) staff actually recommending MBAM to get rid of particularly resilient malware...
Hi Tony, I'd be interested to hear your take on Sandboxie. Do you think Anti-Spyware is still required if you always run your browser sandboxed?
Hi Woody.
I've never used Sandboxie myself. I have a test box I can hose whenever I want, and on my main box I have Acronis True Image installed which has a handy Sandbox feature of itself called "Try&Decide" which I use as well
That said, as there is a variety of ways one can get infected, not just by browsing the net, I think a good Anti-Malware is always a useful addition.