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Originally Posted by Arclight
Fair enough, but it depends on the user I think. If you don't stick your nose in the wrong places, you don't need the very best in security.
Simply forcing a scan on a file you just downloaded, particularly executables, can save you trouble as well. It's really about what you do and how conscious you are of possible threats.
Pretty sure I could just shut down my AV and firewall and only rely on my router's firewall and still never get an infection. The 2nd PC here that's running as a Minecraft server is only firewalled, didn't bother with AV.
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Note that latest tests show that only one of the usually mentioned security suites recognised in active scan an incredible 100% of threats that it was fed with in form of a standardised fixed threat library of the 250 thiusand most common trojans and virusses around. All others ran in the range between from I think 94 to 99% only. Also note that "in the zoo" (=real envrionment threat assessment) even the best candidates have lower recognition rates than when being tested with the standardised threat library. "In the zoo" means the software also depends on routines to recognise new malware that so far is not profled, and recognise it by suspicious behavior of the code. These routines usually can give you a maximum of only 55-60% of correct positives.
If you remmeber that there are more than 2.5 million virusses out there, it means that even an active scan with a reliability of 99% leaves you prone to 25 thousand samples your scanner would not recognise.
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Some of you seem to miss the poiint of my story I started with. I thought exactly like you guys did, until some days ago. I had only freeware, and used the software you mentioned. And when I switched to pro software, all of a sudden all three systems showed that nevertheless they were infected. And yes, I made sure that it were no false positive alarms, but correct alarms.
Don't take it easy, and be sure you don't defend the reliability of freeware just to justify that you personally do not want to spend a yearly fee for a licence. Freeware Antivirus scanners leave your email traffic unprotected, and both these scanners and freeware firewalls do not compare to the full versions's features and reliability. In the latest test that I referred to, the worst solutions for firewalls in their list were - the two freeware candidates, Zonealarm free and Comodo free. Comodo in parts let almost every fourth attack through, if I recall it correctly. The payware Zonealarm is said to have significantly better recognition than the freeware.