With an increasing number of people spending more and more time on their laptops and computers, more people than ever expose themselves to potential viruses and malware attacks. Time and time again it has been proven that the most vulnerable users are those using a Windows machine. That’s not because there is anything wrong with Windows; it is because of the popularity of Windows. The vast majority of machines are using Windows making them more attractive to people creating malicious codes as these will reach a wider audience with higher chances of success.
Is Windows Defender good enough as an antivirus?
Windows Defender, which is included with Windows, does an adequate job, but is by no means great. There are plenty of 3rd party alternatives out there. When buying a new laptop some may already be pre-installed for you on a trial basis. After the trial expires you will be harassed to sign up and pay for them.
What antivirus options are there?
There are also many “free” alternatives, but if you are not paying for software with money the authors must make money by other means. They may sell data gathered on you to interested parties, or they may advertise their other products with annoying popups.
The days of one-time purchase software are gone. The majority of services have now embraced subscription-based methods of payments, most commonly monthly and annually billed. Third-party anti-virus software is often resource hungry which isn’t ideal – we think antivirus software should run silently in the background. McAfee Total Protection, Bitdefender Total Protection and Kaspersky Total Security passively slow down your machines by 8.9%, 19.2% and 11.8% respectively. This means just by having it installed on your machine and not performing any scans manually it slows down your computer by about 10%, which is huge!
Webroot is a superb antivirus and light on system resources
An alternative which does not suffer from these issues is Webroot, which uses minimal system resources and is as effective as its peers. At a more affordable price of just £3.25 per month compared to McAfee £5.40 per month, Bitdefender £5.80 per month and Kaspersky £3.35 per month.
Contact us today for business-grade anti-virus from just £3.25 per month.
*prices correct at the time of print
