Active Viral Shield is a free antivirus package worth checking out

[DeeBye]

http://www.activevirusshield.com

For some reason, the good folks over at AOL (haha) have licensed a version of Kapersky Labs excellent commercial antiviral software and are distributing it for free. I am really impressed with it so far. It's kind of early to tell, but right now it kicks AVG's ass when it comes to how well it works. AVG is awesome because it was free and it was unobtrusive. AVS is even more awesome because it does all that and it works a crapload better.

There is no catch, other than opting out of installing some kind of AOL toolbar (which I fully expected). Virus definition updates come right from Kapersky.

[Wyrm]

There is no catch, other than opting out of installing some kind of AOL toolbar (which I fully expected). Virus definition updates come right from Kapersky.

There's no way some AOL toolbar is the only catch. Call me paranoid if you want, but big companies like AOL don't just give stuff like that away.

[Quark]

There's no way some AOL toolbar is the only catch. Call me paranoid if you want, but big companies like AOL don't just give stuff like that away.

AIM? "Use this free version, but hey, try AOL because the one we have integrated is better!"

[DeeBye]

There's no way some AOL toolbar is the only catch. Call me paranoid if you want, but big companies like AOL don't just give stuff like that away.

I've been using it for a few days now, and there is no catch as far as I can tell. I had to supply an email address for an activation key, but the activation email came from Kapersky and not AOL.

I don't see why it's hard to imagine companies giving away free software. Google has been doing it for years. WinRAR gives away free registration keys every now and then. There are any number of game companies that release older games as freeware.

In my limited time using it, AVS is far superior to AVG. The interface is less clunky, it offers way more real-time protection, it uses less in the way of active system resources, and it auto-updates virus definitions in a completely invisible manner.

So far my only beef with AVS is that I can't seem to configure it to ignore my 3.5" floppy drive. This might be a good thing because at least I know my floppy drive still works (I've only ever used it to install SATA drivers when I installed Windows), but it makes a god awful racket when it tries to access a diskette that isn't there.

[Wyrm]

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I was wondering if anyone could offer any more insight on this now that it's been around for a while. It looks like Kapersky is free this week from CompUSA (well, after rebates) but if the AOL version is the same thing then I would rather just have that so I don't have to worry about the rebate process. So, any more thoughts/opinions about the AOL version?

[DeeBye]

So, any more thoughts/opinions about the AOL version?

I'm still using it, and I really like it a lot more than AVG. It's as unobtrusive an antiviral program as I've ever used.

[Griselda]

I switched to it as well, as AVG doesn't run on 64-bit Windows XP. I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but so far I am happy with it.

[Chesspiece_face]

I switched to it as well, as AVG doesn't run on 64-bit Windows XP. I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but so far I am happy with it.

I switched the other day and am giving it a test run. so far it seems much better than AVG. the fact that it updates in the background is very strong especially for gamers. no longer will i have to smack my forehead as oblivion crashes to desktop when the AVG update pops up. my only minor nit about the update occuring in the background is that while it updates i've experienced some serious application slowdown. read: Instant messenger would not open and because i had no idea AVS was updating i wasn't exactly sure why things were moving so slow. I qualify this by noting that it may have just been because of the fresh install -> major update, and going forward the updates may not have as serious an impact on performance. we'll see.

[Wyrm]

Found this FAQ of the differences between the AOL version and the full one. Really, a lot of the features of the full version sounds like the intrusive (and resource hogging) features of Norton's.

Edit: Also found this article.

If anyone's interested, I found this stuff on the AnandTech forums, specifically this thread.