How essential is it for me to have anti-virus running on my laptop?

[The Boogeyman]

Do I really need anything? I don't visit any dodgy sites, facebooks probably the worst one. If you insist on me using one could you suggest the lightest possible program? I am currently running avast but I found that after a major recent update it makes my laptop less responsive and snappy.

[dr. love]

Mcaffey

[Pulsar]

Avira AntiVir Personal : http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus
has a higher detection rate than a lot of other anti virus systems,
including those people pay for.
light and simple to use.

if you do not like the look of Avira,
then microsoft supply a system for free..

Microsoft Security Essentials : http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

or the lightest you can get is,

Panda free > http://www.cloudantivirus.com/en/#!/free...s-download



.

[Murzy]

uninstall it and try another AV program. you should always have one running

[mech]

Google MSE or what is Microsoft Security essentials. It's very effective and uses less ram and cpu power than any competitive software. It's made by Microsoft and is reliable.

[sosguy]

You will be a "sitting duck" on the Internet without a virus scan. You don't even have to go to bad sites anymore to get a virus - some are dropped into legitimate web sites. For instance, our local papers web site was hacked last week with a Trojan.
You are using one of the best free virus scans around with Avast. Any virus scan will slow the response of your computer slightly simply by the fact of scanning scrips when you navigate to a web page. I do not recommend McAffe at all - it is a resource hog.
I do recommend running Avast with Firefox browser and two free Spyware programs: Spybot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster.

[HPUser97]

I use Microsoft Security Essentials. It says out of the way and is free.