We have a question today from Mike:
Can you please tell me if there is a free anti virus available that is compatible to Vista home Premium for my laptop..I use AVG 7.5 on my PC that has XP operating system that seems to work quite well but will not work on my Laptop. Many thanks for your help see you next meeting Regards. Mike
Ok Mike - yes there are many Anti-virus programs that work on Vista including some free. When it was first released some low level changes in the Vista software meant that some AV programs didn't work properly or well. If you use 64-bit Vista you still need to be choosey. But your run of the mill Vista now has lots of choices. Among the free ones are:
A couple of reviews I have read say Avira is slightly better than AVG and Avast is ok too. Both Avira and AVG use little system resources so they shouldn't hog or slow down your system too much.
All the reviews say that the paid products are generally better than the freebies which is no great surprise. But to be honest if you practice ultra-safe surfing and email habits you wouldn't even need AV. So be practical and cautious and you should be fine with any of the 3 above.
My new laptop has a 3 year subscription to McAfee so I am just using that. It has Anti-Spyware built in too but if you want to use the above free AV programs then I suggest you use Windows Defender for Anti-Spyware too. It's installed in Vista by default and is downloadable for XP. See past discussions
If you are happy with AVG Free on your home PC then just use it on the laptop too. Not sure why you would have had problems installing? Do you have the most recent version?
Try downloading again from the link above. If you have trouble installing jot down the specific error messages and let us know.
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