I have a new laptop with Win 7 Home Premium. this machine came with already installed "MS Security Essentials" anti virus.
I've installed on the laptop another protection "Symantec Endpoint Protection".
I guess I don't need to have them both, can you please tell me which one of them will be better for my use case, so I'll remove the other?
MS Security Essentials provide enough protection on many PCs, in my opinion I'd keep that one. From Symantec, only the mainline products could beat it (like Internet Security).
(Not part of the answer: (Anway, I'd install Avast Free!))
Oh yes and I forgot:
Install (seriously) MalwareBytes Anti-Malware AND Spybot S&D.
Both are on-demand. After you installed them, update your Spybot, do an immunization (do the update+immun occasionally). And sometimes run a MalwareBytes scan (I don't use the scan module of Spybot). This way you are totally OK in my opinion. (Always prooved to be perfect so far.)
With the latest attack we've experienced, MS Security Essentials is the only one that has been able to remove the Qakbot. This was a particularly vicious mutable trojan w/ backdoor buddies. Not only did it shoot holes through Symantec, it attached itself to AVG and ran in parallel.
Go with Security Essentials on any Windows machine. Avira didn't stop it, Kaspersky didn't stop it.
I used Kaspersky for years and grew very dissatisfied. I now use Security Essentials and am very pleased.
Weekly, I also use Malwarebytes, but it comes up empty.
I see no need for anything else.
AVG anti virus is free (for home use) and regularly gets very high marks in tests, even against commercial products.
MSE is fine for a home user but SEP offers more functionality and fine tuning. SEP is generally more business oriented. As such, once its subscription expires, you are out of luck and exposed. MSE is free. I have access to SEP and MSE on my Win 7 machine and chose MSE, mostly due to its small footprint.
We're using ClamWin on our Vista and Windows 7 machines at work, since our corporate antivirus doesn't support either of those operating systems (WTF!). It's free and works well; I've also got the Mac version installed on my laptop to scan and Office docs I get before opening them.
I've also got MS Security Essentials installed on Windows 7, mostly because it was free.
Note that I generally disable any "real time" scanning or other crap that slows the machine down, but I scan anything I download from an untrusted source.
Avira free - http://www.free-av.com/
Before Avira I used to use AVG free, but Avira has better detection rates.
If you're in the market for a paid product (which you don't need), you could try Vipre or Esset Nod32.
MS security essentials is the best free anti-virus around, but detections rates for paid apps change daily so we never are quite sure who has the best paid. i, personally, never trust Symantec, but if it isn't slowing your computer, multiple antiviruses are usually good. the only time i have problem with protection programs is firewalls, you only want one of those.
My organization is using Kaspersky Internet Security 2010. It has all the features you would want in an anti-virus program like this and has a small footprint. It hardly uses any system resources. When I was comparing anti-virus software a couple years ago, the decision for me came down to Kaspersky and BitDefender. I emailed both companies what I needed and only Kaspersky got back to me in a reasonable time.
