A different AV question

[carlosbutler]

I am able to get Sophos anti-virus for free from my university. I can of course also go for other free AV like ClamXav or iAntiVirus.

I have seen that there is not really much point in going for one, and from previous experience of using AV on Windows, it will just slow down the computer a huge amount. But if I were to go for one, which one?

macworld rated sophos as two and a half. And the other ones came up as slow, or not that thorough etc...

 

[r0k]

I am able to get Sophos anti-virus for free from my university. I can of course also go for other free AV like ClamXav or iAntiVirus.

I have seen that there is not really much point in going for one, and from previous experience of using AV on Windows, it will just slow down the computer a huge amount. But if I were to go for one, which one?

macworld rated sophos as two and a half. And the other ones came up as slow, or not that thorough etc...

I downloaded and ran clamx once. I since deleted it. You don't need AV software on OS X (yet). Pay attention to warnings. We don't get them often on OS X, but when we get them they are real. Every time you download a dmg file that contains executable content, when you run the executable content (installer or whatever) you get a warning. If you see the warning unexpectedly, the answer should always be no. This common sense approach is about all the anti malware required on OS X these days.

If you choose to get AV software anyway, take some time finding the one that uses least system resources. Whatever you do, don't pay for AV. Paying for AV was the worst thing I ever did on Windows and I am confident it is true on OS X as well. If you pay for AV, you are entering into an agreement where you will be nagged on a periodic basis, usually once a year, for updates.

 

[carlosbutler]

Wouldnt pay for AV ever on windows partition I use AVG anyways... I have just found out that I also have netbarrier as part of a macupdate promo as well, although I bought that because of parallels