If you switch on your new PC and assume you're safe from viruses because you've seen no suspicious behaviour, you're heading for trouble; if you're running a small business that trouble could be among your biggest risks. Viruses these days can do anything from disrupting applications, to sending out spam through your server, turning your PC into a 'zombie bot' for a distributed denial of service attack, to encrypting your data and holding it ransom.
There is no shortage of antivirus suites out there, and we've collected ten from ZDNet.co.uk's Downloads channel for you. Some of these are free to try and some are free to use - often with ugrades available to commercial versions that give you extra features.
Talkback
With so many products rated at number ten, it's obvious that a new rating system is needed..... they can't ALL be exactly as good as each other!
Why has AVG Free edition got an editors rating of 10? AVG is not a good product and does not provide adequate protection. You are misleading your readers.
AVG Free edition is known to intercept around 85% of known threats. I have been writing on internet security and maintaining systems for many years. I Used to recommend AVG Free edition but that recommendation became out of date three years ago.
1 in 6 known threats getting through an Antivirus program is unacceptable and so is your recommendation of it!
Both Avast free edition and Antivir free edition provide greater than 95% interception of known threats - actually both are closer to 100%.
Kaspersky has no editors rating but that offers a much greater protection than AVG, also well over 90%.
You really need to check up the latest comparative findings and update your ratings and recommendations as they are not serving your readers well and actually put them at risk.
Matthew
If you have been "writing on internet security and maintaining systems for many years" let's have some references, please. Anyone can make up anything here. You have no credibility without substantiation.