Yankanuk, 1) Please don't send me any emails, OK? 2) Obviously you are not familiar with the VB 100. Did you know that AVG recently qualified for most OS except for 98 and Me, and never qualified for any Ms OS prior to Feb 2004? Did you also know that 2004 was the first year AVG has ever passed for XP. I'm glad you have that kind of courage, but I can tell you this, Nod32 has been the top in the VB100 ( the known authority on antivirus testing) on "Virus in the Wild" (actually means known virus) category for 15 straight years, while AVG failed all together and now is only certified for XP and 2000. Avast passed in June 2003 and 2003 for XP and Windows 2000, then went a year failing to protect XP in June 2004 and again has now received a pass in June 2005. It also has never protected Me or 98 except in November of 1998 for a year. So please when you are speaking with such great authority, be aware that all 3 I recommended have never, ever received a "fail" for any OS, and this goes back 15 years (except Bit defender has only been around 2 years)...so go spend whatever you like on your pc, and protect it by spending nothing if you fail safe, but can you tell me anywhere else where something you got for free was safer or better than something you did not pay for?

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You know, this is getting a bit interesting. Best not best... free vs pay. Does anyone here actually take the time to test these things -- or is all of this merely ego posturing? Did AVG and AVAST pass the current VB 100? Yes to both. Unless I'm using an old version, why should I care that the older version didn't pass? The something might not have passed, in the PAST is nothing more than a smokescreen if you look at the products available, today. The ONLY criteria that matters is if the current version, the one I'd download (including both free and pay) is whether or not the current version passes. If it does, why does it matter. Some minor nits: in the wild does not refer to just known viruses, it refers to anything that is on the net. Some av signatures make it into the list based upon pure lab work, only. You say AVG failed altogether, then admit that is recently passed. Can't be both.

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My apologies if I sounded harsh in the above posts. A true fact...I helped a guy with a 4 month old Toshiba laptop. He was on DSL and never told he should use a firewall. So he had Norton 2005 installed thinking he was safe...NOT! I cleaned out over 300 viruses, as well as spy and adware, installed Sygate Free Firewall when his PC kept locking up. I up-dated Norton and scanned again, there were still lots of errors coming up. I then decided to d/l Avast and see what would happen. It found another 16 viruses that Norton missed and the PC was back to running normal again. So I uninstalled Norton completely and he said the laptop was running the fastest he'd ever seen. Free is pretty good at times. Also, Davis had a good post making alot of sense. Business as usual

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