Microsoft to give away anti-virus software

[voodooflux]

I've been running AVG for severla months and find it a pain in the ar*e when it updates itself - too intrusive.

To be honest you'll probably hate Avira even more - it's very instrusive when it updates as it displays an advert.

Don't really need the email client integration as the threats would only come from attachments so if you save them locally and scan before opening, you should be OK. Right?

That's essentially my view as well, but my email also gets scanned for viruses on the server.

[blacjac]

Threats also come from some images that are downloaded when you open emails, so you would have to make sure your client is set to not download content automatically as well.

[blacjac]

Avast downloads in the background, it does pop up a message when it's finished to let you know there has been an update, but you can turn this off in the settings.

[Fred Bloggs]

So what is the best free AV software then?

could do with some new stuff as Norton is about to run out of its free trial period

Look no further than avast! it's the best, been using it for years now.