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Anti-virus software is a software application that is used to identify, prevent, and remove computer viruses, worms and trojan horses. More recently the types of malware this class of software deals with has also grown to encompass adware and spyware.

Due to the increased popularity of free anti-virus options for consumers, popular anti-virus software with a free option have been split up to improve the granularity of the information in the poll.

2011 Member Choice Anti-virus poll
The results in this year's poll showed a quite a shift from 2009.

The biggest change since 2009 was the release of Microsoft Security Essentials. Since it was released in September 2009 after the 2009 poll it has become the most popular anti-virus choice of DSLR users edging out our second place option, Avast Free Antivirus.

Avast Antivirus was the by far the top choice in 2009. This time around, Avast Antivirus Free is our second choice, slightly behind MSE. The slip in position was due, in part to MSE's arrival, and in part due to the splitting up of the Free and Pro (paid) version in this year's poll.

Much farther behind our top two most popular anti-virus software, in third place, is the Symantec's consumer offering, Norton AntiVirus. Avira AntiVir and ESET NOD32 rounds out the top 5.

The 2011 Anti-virus Member Choice Top 10 are:
Microsoft Security Essentials
Avast Antivirus Free
Norton AntiVirus
Avira AntiVir
ESET NOD32
Avast Pro Antivirus
AVG Anti-Virus Free
Kaspersky Anti-Virus
Symantec AntiVirus (CE/Endpoint)
•None (which remained at 10th place)

Other interesting points of note include:
Posts in the forum indicated that the open source ClamAV was a popular choice for Linux and Mac OS X users who did use an anti-virus software. ClamWin was a option that was used as a secondary or a portable anti-virus scanner.

For Mac OS X users, not using any anti-virus software was recurring motif.

Here are the full results of the 2011 poll and the forum responses.


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by decx See Profile edited by lilhurricane See Profile
last modified: 2011-05-30 11:13:19