Lightest Anti-Virus you ever used?

First of all, I know that no antivirus is 100% secure, and that the best protection is surfing smart.

But I've been searching for this answer for a long time. Its a fact that most top tier anti-virus programs (Avast, Avira, AVG etc), be it free or paid offer decent protection, some slightlybetter than the other. But, some of them are veryheavyon computer resources while the others are verylight. Why so?

And most importantly the main question, which antivirus do you think is the lightest on system resources?
(In terms of memory, CPU and disk usage)


For example, currently using Kaspersky IS 2016, and on idle it uses around roughly 40MBsof RAM and ~0.4%of CPU.
But the lightest I came across is Webroot, with less than20MBsof RAM and 0%CPU usage. (I know these results vary between different computers, but rough estimates are fine).

Are you sure you are counting all the services and processes related to the AV? Lets not forget about HDD activity.

So far I use to install Bitdefender Freeon 10 as the lightest AV. According to performance tests, Avira is the lightest, but on every computer I have tried it on, it turned out to be the heaviest, took 30 mins just to install and then ran like hell.

 

You might not be going down the best yellow brick road; while I cannot explain whats/whys of product's memory percentages and cpu usage percentages, I have experienced AVG, Avast, Avira, Emsisoft, anti-virus programs.

For sure, doing the custom or advanced installs, I get to choose which services, which modules, I want installed and which ones I don't want installed. Memory and cpu usages also depend upon real time protection shields and extras were installed and started.

Each one, in their hay-day, had strengths and lesser strengths, for example Avast free had lots of control over shield operations, a tiny bit more X and less Y than AVG free, somewhat more than Avira free versions.

All of them, if allowed to express-install, installed numerous modules and services that often had nothing to do with anti-virus operations, such as browser safezone, folder/file safezone, pc fixer-upper, pc-speeder-upper, pc-tuner-upper, software updater, driver updater, and other Swiss Army Knife blades. This additional stuff eats up memory and cpu resources.

For me, the best yellow brick road was: which one of those:
-- can I live with the most?
-- can I most easily adjust settings?
-- can I most easily understand the reports generated?
-- can I believe is providing decent, high-quality, anti-virus [and with Emsisoft - including anti-malware] protection?
-- can I believe is giving me a balance of solid security [one see-saw end] and computer usability, functionality [other see-saw end]?
Now this is just me talking, once I have found my ComputerVana with Avira and Emsisoft, I never gave a thought to the memory and cpu usage percentages.

Take Bitdefender Free as mentioned above for instance, it has not been updated since 2014 so may not be as effective as it could be.

Bitdefender Free was last updated on June 19th 2016, signatures are updated daily, just the webpage is not.

 

Are you sure you are counting all the services and processes related to the AV? Lets not forget about HDD activity.

So far I use to install Bitdefender Freeon 10 as the lightest AV. According to performance tests, Avira is the lightest, but on every computer I have tried it on, it turned out to be the heaviest, took 30 mins just to install and then ran like hell.

Yes, counting all processes related to the AV, Webroot seems as the lightest yet I don't know how effective it is. You can get a free 14 day trial and test it out if you want.

I can't complain about Avira on my laptop. It was indeed very light when I tried it, and also very secure. I'd definitely recommend it as one of the best free programs out there. The only thing I didn't like about it, was the short scan that commences when a threat is detected, and I don't know if that can be disabled.

You might be able to turn it off in services, however, perhaps it's better to simply let it do its thing. Now, if you find an off switch within Avira's many sub-menus, it's safe to turn it off there.

Defender..

Hi Everyone,
Hope you all are enjoying this holiday ( if it applies ), at this point in time I've just about decided to try windows defender once again. I'm using something else right now, but I like what I'm seeing with windows defender. I also already have malwarebytes running on this computer..
David

Windows 10 integrated Defender is an excellent product!