It was two years after my first article about the lightest antivirus and there are hundreds of hits to it. I believe it means that there are so many people who are quite pissed with their antivirus who are consuming their RAMs mercilessly (allright, I know I exaggerate it..). But eventhough the RAM price is amazingly cheap right now, we still never be satisfied with antivirus who take too much free memory.

Besides, for those of you who already use Windows Vista, you know how hungry this little baby from Microsoft is right? So you don’t want any more hungry application such as the anti virus to consume your free RAMs further.

This time I only review the free anti virus because I believe, for personal use, they are very much enough to do the job. Not that I’m against any paid anti virus, but trust me, preventing virus is actually 80% of habits rather than the anti virus itself, such as regularly updating the virus definition, refrain opening suspicious email attachments, and taking precautions when downloading from internet.

I use AVG 7.5 as the baseline because it was the winner from my previous review.

For scanning speed test, I use my 256 USB flash disk that contains mixes of files, compressed, images, documents, music, videos, anything.

Baseline: AVG 7.5

This is the lightest antivirus I tested two years ago. It has a standard user interface uncluttered with many graphics, which can be one of the reasons of its light memory footprint. I retested the software once again this time as the base line as to which the other antiviruses are tested.

Idle: 1,060 K
Scanning: 56,492 K – 62,492 K
Scanning time: medium

1. AVG 8.0

The AVG 8.0 has great looks and interface compared to the AVG 7.5. However, this time it consumes a few more memory that AVG 7.5. The installer file size also greatly increased from 36.6 MB for AVG 7.5 to 57.2 MB.

My house PC that has only 192 MB RAM was installed with AVG 7.5 a year ago was automatically updated with AVG 8.0 when my brother connects to the internet. The PC was already pretty slow with AVG 7.5 and it was slower when the AVG was updated. I believe the AVG 8.0 has some improvements as well beside the user interface causing it to consumes more memory.

It is however still a good antivirus in that it still can accept offline update. Though internet connection is getting better and cheaper in Indonesia, I still like the idea of offline updates so much and AVG is kind enough to thought about this.

Idle: 6,548 K – 10,036 K
Scanning: ~86,568 K
Scanning speed: Medium

2. Avira Antivir 8.2 Personal

I admit I made a mistake. On my previous lightest antivirus post I included the Avira on the list, but I forgot to test it.
This time I tested it and I love it. I use it as my antivirus in my laptop for almost a year already and I have no bad experience with it.

Sometimes the service failed to start with reasons that I don’t know though.

When the software is not in use it is the lightest antivirus tested here. During scanning, however, it take up quite significant amount of memory. But since 95% of the time our antivirus software is idle, so it’s not a big problem.

One note about Antivir, once I got a virus that was totally undetected by AVG 7.5 in my thumbdrive, but Antivir successfully removed it.

It has no offline update and you must be connected to internet to keep the virus database updated. Though as far I remember, the Antivir 7.0 versions support offline update, but not in the 8.0 versions.

Idle: 14,464 K
Scanning: 63,364 K
Scanning time: very fast

3. Avast 4.8 Home Edition

This is the antivirus that is installed in my office PC. It is pretty good so far, no sudden increase in consumation of memory whatsoever. There are several processes I see running in the Task Manager that totalled about 57,900 KB, not so light though.

No offline update as well.

Idle: 57,900 K
Scanning: 98,600 K
Scanning speed: very fast

4. PCMAV 1.92 Build 3

This is the Indonesian made antivirus and I’m proud of it.
It is a simple antivirus based on the open source ClamAV but with local virus database added.
This is actually my first AV in mind to clean up PCs infected with Indonesian made virus, since most of the time the other antivirus have not add the virus signature in their update. The maker is also very actively updated the database, so you can really rely on it.

It is a portable like application that you don’t need to install, just run it from the folder. Another plus.

It has a real time version that checks for virus activity on background, however it is still quite unstable until the latest version.

Just as ClamAV, the virus database file is only a vdb file placed in the same folder as the application. Downloading the latest vdb before running PCMAV means updating the virus database. So yeah, this antivirus supports offline update.

Idle: 23,280 K
Scanning: up to 31,600 K
Scanning speed: slow

5. ThreatFire 3.5

I never heard this AV before. In fact, just before I published my post I saw this antivirus adwords in filehippo.com and I was interested to test it first and put it in this lightest antivirus review.

It is the fastest antivirus during installation process, maybe around 5 – 10 seconds (including the quick next-next-next click already). It works right away, no fuss at all. It is indeed a perfect contender in this lightest antivirus review.

It’s idle memory consumption is second to AVG 7.5, but what amazed me further is its memory consumption during scanning. It even beats the AVG 7.5, sweet.

One funny thing about this antivirus is, why I can’t right click on my USB drive and find the “Scan with ThreatFire” while the option shows if I right click on any folder or file. Regardless, I will try to use this antivirus in my office PC for awhile and wait for more surprises from this light antivirus.

Oh yeah, no offline update for this ThreatFire.

Idle: 7,752 K
Scanning: 16,968 K
Scanning speed: fast

Summary

To be honest, there is really no significant technological advancements in antivirus software for the last two years (please correct me if I’m wrong.. :p). So there is also no really much difference between the antiviruses I tested now with what I tested two years ago.
For enterprise security, probably some new features can really help to make system administrator life easier. For personal PC however, nothing much can change.

I almost re-choose the AVG 8.5 as a winner this year till I tried the ThreatFire 3.5. So sorry AVG, please try again next year.
The winner is ThreatFire 3.5 this time, it’s just amazingly light at scanning, making it as my best lightest anti virus of the year 2009.

Give it a try, its interface is cool and simple enough, very interesting for those who want an light antivirus in easy 3 steps (1-install, 2-update, 3-relax). Though for those of you who wants more control and configurations, you won’t find much in ThreatFire.

So that’s it guys for this year djitz lightest antivirus review. I hope this review helps you in choosing the antivirus that suits you!

I guess this is one of the reason why Unix machines are more stable and fast. They don’t need antivirus that consume much of the PC memory like the one we have in Windows.

I thought that I might migrate to Linux for this reason, but I can’t do that since I still need 90% of the Windows applications that I use now. So I can’t leave Windows just yet, but how can I remove the antivirus without making me in great danger?

So, that’s where the idea comes to find the lightest antivirus, or to be more accurate, what antivirus that consume less PC resources (CPU and Memory)?

I tried googling for that keyword “lightest antivirus” and found several forum discussions that have people’s opinions about their thought about it.

Most of the people said that the lightest antivirus around is Nod32. But I still look around and tested other antivirus as well.

- Nod32 — http://www.eset.com/products/windows.php
- Kaspersky 6 — http://www.kaspersky.com/kaspersky_anti-virus
- AVG Free Edition — http://free.grisoft.com/
- Avast! — http://www.avast.com
- Antivir PersonalEdition Classic — http://www.free-av.com/

AVG Free Edition

If I’m not wrong the AVG supposedly stop supporting their free antivirus at the end of May 2007. But somehow they changed their mind and continue making updates and even new version of AVG Free Edition.

For me, AVG Free Edition is the winner here. It’s light, it has offline update, and it’s FREE! This seems to good to be true (maybe it is..).

Some people mentioned that AVG got some problem detecting new viruses. Well, from my experience with virus outbreak in my workplace, there was a time where AVG didn’t able to heal a new local virus (a Brontok variant), BUT SO DOES THE OTHER PAID ANTIVIRUS. So I guess, the AVG is still better off since it’s free.

Better yet, they have incremental update so you don’t need to download the whole virus database over and over again like McAfee or Norton Antivirus Update.

The antivirus uses less than 8,000 KB memory in total (AVG run several process for the the on-access scan). During drive scanning it uses only around 20,000 KB. Simply put, it uses half of the memory that McAfee uses. Which is cool…

For me this is my choice of lightest antivirus, both for memory and for my pocket.

Nod32

Like I’ve mentioned earlier, many people in the internet forum mentioned that this Nod32 is the best antivirus around. Small memory and CPU usage, plus great heuristic unknown virus detection and advanced options, makes it a great AV… if only I can use it.

The biggest problem that Nod32 has is, the update is only available through direct connection to internet. No offline update like other antivirus provide is available.

Now, that’s no problem for countries where internet connection is abundant and cheap. But for me in Indonesia where it’s still a few years from now, it’s a big problem.

I didn’t able to test the Nod32 in my PC, so I cannot give much comment accept for the offline update that is not available.

Avast! Home Edition Free

Avast! also come with a free version, making it a competitor of AVG in giving free antivirus software.
I tried the avast! Home Edition Free antivirus and it has a very “futuristic” interface, so much so until I had problems finding which button to click to scan all my harddrives.

Like AVG, the memory usage is also very minimal both during active harddrive scan and on-access scan. Nice..

Unfortunately, I don’t find the avast! home edition is intuitively easy to use like the AVG. The interface that is too beautiful also signalize a more resource consumption than the AVG interface that is simple yet user friendly.

The update for avast! is available to be downloaded for offline update, but I can’t found small incremental update like AVG, so it still can’t beat AVG also here.

Kaspersky 6

The website mentioned that the Kaspersky version 6 is already compatible with Windows Vista. But when my friend installed it in his newly bought Vista notebook, it’s far from working. It even had problem during installation.

Someone from a forum mentioned that Kaspersky is running light on memory. Unfortunately when I tested in my PC, it’s simply not. It’s even a little more memory consumptive compared to McAfee Antivirus Enterprise installed. From the task manager memory usage, it took around 22,000 KB while standby, I wonder how many more will it take during scan process.

So, Kaspersky 6 is totally out from lightest antivirus around.

Conclusion

For me the best light antivirus is very clear here. It’s the AVG Free Edition.
And for several reasons: On-Access and Active Scan Memory and CPU Usage, Update, Good Virus Detection, and Price.

Please keep in mind that this review focus mainly on the resource usage of the antivirus during on-access and active scan. So heuristic virus detection, scan time, and support is not considered much.

Some people in the internet forum mentioned that avast! is an also good free antivirus. Well, maybe, but not for me because AVG certainly beat avast in several aspects.

If you have other comment and opinion, please let me know!