Best AV for a new computer user

Hi, a family member of mine has recently bought a laptop and since they have never used one so far, I will need to teach them. They are waiting to be connected to the internet. This got me thinking about AVs, I use Avira premium because of it's high detection rate (and consistancy) but I don't think this would be suited to the new user because of the many FP's and a fair bit of user interaction when it finds a suspicious file.
So what I am asking is does anyone know of an AV (that includes anti-spyware) most suited to a new user. Which would mean few FP's and as little user interactin as possible with a simple UI. With this said it must also be very good at detection and if necessary, virus removal?


Thank you for the help.

I am using Symantec Antivirus (note: this is NOT Norton Antivirus) and the only time it pops up is when it has found a threat. The only user input it requires is clicking 'ok' because it is just a report of what it has done with it.

I find it to be a pretty good AV, which also gets rid of quite a lot (but unfortunately not all) of spyware. It does not seem to check your bootsector or anything running in memory.

Recently, I've seen ESET Smart Security performing better than Symantec AV, but I can't tell you how often it requires the user to do something. This one does include memory but I'm not 100% sure about checking the bootsector.

Thank you for the reply.

What is the difference between Symantec AV and Symantec Norton? And I think ESET has a pop up for each virus it finds and asks whether to clean, delete or ignore. When you say that your Symantec AV requires user input but just to click 'ok', do you not get any pop up sayng something like; 'Virus found. delete or ignore?' ?

Symantec Antivirus has a lot of options you can set up, which includes the actions it should take when it finds a virus. So when it finds a virus, it'll automatically deal with it and just show the report with the virus, the file's path and what it has done to remove the threat. It will not ask you what to do with it, because it already knows and the threat is already gone by the time you see the report. All it'll want is for the user to click ok to close that window. By default, its first action would be to try and clean the virus out of the file, and the second to quarantine it. I never changed any settings in Symantec AV, and I've noticed it deletes any files that were created by the virus.

Userinput wise and scan wise I don't know what the differences between Symantec AV and Norton AV are because I've never used Norton AV. What I do know is that Norton AV takes up a lot more system resources and can potentially slow the computer down, while Symantec doesn't.

I'm partial to NOD32.

Norton AV and Symantec AV use the same AV engine, Norton AV is packaged for consumers and Norton AV is a corporate-oriented version with multiple users and a client-server architecture.

I quit using symantec/norton a couple years ago and I don't miss it one bit

Sorry forgot about this thread! I feel it's best I give a conclusion as others my find it useful.

I ended up getting Norton 2010 for them. It started off fine and I was impressed by how much it had improved from when I last tried it some years ago. Early this year a couple of viruses got into their system so I had to sort that out for them and I was told that it was constantly annoying them and also slowing system start-up so they disabled it! After I had the system back to full health they didn't want me to put Norton back on, so even though they've paid for a subscription they've only used 7 months of it and are now running Avast! Free Edition which they seem to like! Oh well, trial and error is suppose...

I think avira is a good option because it has highest detection rate (as per you and me both have the same experience). Norton is quite irritating AV neither it detects autorun.inf nor many of trojans. You only need to teach your family member how to quarantine virus thats it. So I still prefer to use Avira.

Avast, Avira and AVG are pretty good and have free versions available.

http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download
http://www.free-av.com/en/download/index.html
http://free.avg.com/au-en/homepage

EDIT: Latest version of AVG uses quite a lot of resources. I recommend Avast or Avira.

McAfee Internet Security Suite is is best.It is a well known name for its ability to detect and clean viruses from a PC.

Try FPROT Anti virus google fprot, raeinternet

ESET Smart Security. It protects everything for a home users.

although free antivirus software is good, it has limitations.

i 'm the IT guru here at work, and we do use AVG free on most pc's which is good to catch generic stuff, but i have found i need a stronger AV software to really protect myself, because i am trailing software, downloading all kinds of stuff from the web i found only Kaspersky to catch all the bugs out there.