free antivirus / firewall - do they stay up to date?

[Rosieglow]

My Norton internet security is about to expire & I've been recommended Sygate firewall & Antivir personal free downloads instead.

But do these stay up to date? Do you still get automatic updates of new viruses / threats etc or does this only come with paid for versions?

Not sure I trust something that's free - can someone reassure me?

Also do either of these include spyware or do I need that separately?

AVG is free and comes with free updates, I have just switched to it because my Mcafee missed 10 trojans.

19, not 10

Yeah Ive had AVG free for a while, it is very good, however you need to make sure you have no viruses when you upload it as it can see it as part of your computer and then it wont remove it! go to downloads.com this is where i downloaded, as some websites can actually give you viruses if you attempt to download antivirus! so be very careful. You will also need to remove all other asntivirus beforhand!

Nothing wrong with free, per se. A lot of the stuff I trust is free, whereas you can pay a lot of money for stuff I wouldn't trust.

On the free side of things you can trust AVG antivirus, but you should also get some anti-spyware tools and a firewall.

For the firewall, ZoneAlarm or PC Tools Firewall are OK. For the anti-spyware, maybe AdAware, SuperAntiSpyware or Spybot Search And Destroy.

Thanks for the advice. Is Sygate not recommended then? I've been recommemnded to download them from the filehippo site. Is this OK or one of the ones that give you viruses?

I'm not familiar with Sygate or Filehippo, so all I can say is that I haven't anything bad (or good) about them.

bumping for the evening crowd.

I'm using a copy of sygate firewall I had before Norton bought sygate and replaced it with a paid version of their own software.

The filehippo copy is the last good version and is genuine.

Sygate is good, but with no new updates it's not a long term solution. I don't know about Sygate Antivirus, but an Antivirus that wasn't being updated would be no use at all.

I recommend getting AVG free.