It has been years since I have had a virus on my machine. I usually browse as a non-administrator and I am very careful about what websites I visit. My friends are not so lucky. I had to clean off some nasty viruii last week for a friend of mine. I decided to do my homework and find free anti-virus products.

Here are the top 5 that I found:

1. AVG 7.1 – My personal favorite. Finds viruses that big boys sometimes miss

2. AntiVir – Little known anti-virus product that includes anti-spyware

3. Avast! – Free antivirus – no frills

4. F-Prot – Nice free version for Linux users

5. BitDefender - Free antivirus for Windows and Linux.

Another program I like is the McAfee Stinger tool – It looks for list of the most common viruses on a system, and runs even on the most comprimised computers. In a future article I will release a freeware application I have developed that will let you run it remotely on your LAN – still needs to be cleaned up so it will remain private for now.