After a lot of people told me that I forgot one of the best anti-virus freeware products out there I decided to take a look at Clam Win to get a better judgment on the claims made. The good thing besides that its free is that it´s also Open Source which makes it more transparent than the rest of the free antivirus programs.
The program is easy to download and install which is also a plus, just download, double click on the downloaded tool and you are ready to go. You have the option to include different languages, the source and add windows explorer and outlook integration. I´am not using Outlook so I removed this option and left everything else untouched for now.
 |  |
The user interface is a basic one, you don´t have all the nifty graphics most other antivirus programs use. Clam is simply in that way, but its also fast due to this. I don´t care about looks if a program does what I expect it to do, but I know there are lots of people who like a resource eating monster like Symantec Internet Security more than a freeware program without the cool animated effects.
You have lots of configuration options, you can set filters, email alerts, schedule scans and use a proxy for the automatic internet updates if you like. Automatic updates are a great plus for Clam, my current antivirus software that I use (AVG) does not have automatic updates, you have to start the updates manually which is a great hassle. Especially when you don´t know if there has been a update at all.
What I don´t like about Clam is that its only having a plugin for outlook which is the most used email software of course but should not be used by anyone serious about making his pc more secure.
I can recommend Clam Win especially to users of Microsoft Outlook and users who tend to forgot to check for internet updates of their antivirus software. Resources accessed are minimal which is also a good thing for an anti-virus product.
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.Related Articles:
Antivirus Multi Monitors Directory With Multiple Antivirus SoftwareCloud Antivirus
Antivirus Test
Using PC Tools Antivirus Free Edition as Security Backup
Panda Cloud Antivirus Released Still Free
Great post, it’s nice to see a blogger that actully reads the comments
ClamWin is a great little AV scanner; it has a tiny footprint compared to most AV products and has a top notch engine. It uses the Linux Enterprise ClamAV engine and update system. All of their updates and core engine are GPL’ed from the ClamAV project and you can’t get better than that.
Unfortunately it does have a few downsides.
1.) It’s very slow at running a full system scan. That’s not normally a big deal as you turn it on and walk away.
2.) It does not have on demand scanning yet (were it scans any file that becomes active in memory on the fly) but they are working on that part.
3.) It does not have a pluggin for Thunderbird, which should be a criminal offence. That’s the next project after finishing the on demand scanning feature.
Overall I recommend ClamWin for anyone wanting a good solid AV program without the extra spam/firewall/kitchen sink suites that the big $$ companies push.
How long have you been using AVG? I have used it for over a year and it updates daily. This feature has been available since I started using it and was one of the reasons for choosing it.
I need very good virus scaning for spyware/adware