by : Friso Kluitenberg

Many solutions are available to counter the threat of viruses. Some of them are free, but most of them are commercial products.In this article I am going to talk about the differences in quality and performance.
Commercial Antivirus
Commercial antivirus solutions, use the money that you pay to make contact around the world and try to keep up with the ever evolving threats. Because the product is commercial, they can afford to hire people, who will do this all day long. Hackers are always trying to find new exploits to take over your pc. With a 24-hours-a-day team ready, they can push out updates, as soon as they notice a thread. Sometimes, commercial products have a free subbranch, like AVG-Anti Virus. AVG Free updates will be pushed out somewhat later, leaving you vulnerable for a longer period. Commercial products ussualy consist of anti-virus,anti-spyware and even of a firewall. Zone-alarm for example. While zone-alarm is mainly a firewall, the proffesional version is also bundled with anti-spyware.

Free Ones

The best anti virus solution is a commercial one, but if you are not willing to spend any money on it, a free subbranch of a commercial product becomes the best choice. This is because the same team is working on the updates and signatures, instead of hobbyist, or a group of free-time-computer-experts. Free anti virus does not offer sufficient protection, while only the most dangerous threats can be found and removed.It does often not offers protection against smaller threats. Free anti-virus software does have a smaller and more optimized gui