I asked a bloke who graduated from Harvard and he told me:
No. There are free anti-virus packages out there that you can download.
Also, at least some of these commercial packages have gotten big and bloated to the point that they slow down one’s machine, etc.
So, I go with free.
The one that I’m using now is Comodo’s–as you’ll see here they have a bunch of separate products as well as a suite, all free:
http://www.comodo.com/home/
There are others, too, like AVG and Avast!; I’ve chosen Comodo because, unlike most of the others, it’s free for personal and business use and since I do both with my machines, it’s helpful to have that.
And the Comodo stuff does seem to work.
There are many comparisons online of the various programs, here’s one from 2007 (obviously, the more recent, the better) — Comodo I think comes out pretty well:
http://freesoftwarecomparison.
Whatever you do, make sure you’re only running one anti-virus on your machine or you can run into trouble–be sure to uninstall McAfee before installing anything else.
P.S. FWIW, I also periodically run the free Spybot program (Spybot Search & Destroy), available from its maker here:
http://www.safer-networking.
P.P.S. Microsoft will be releasing Microsoft Security Essentials at some point, I assume as a freebie (in beta now): http://www.microsoft.com/
