Newbie needs help with antivirus software...

Hi all,

I'm new to posting on Mac Forums, but I have used it a few times over the years for research, so thank you for that

I have crossed over to the darkside today and installed Parallels 6 and Windows 7 onto my MacBook Pro, purely because I needed to use Sage software for a course I'm doing.

Can anyone recommend a good and preferably free, antivirus program for the Windows bit? And also I know I have installed Parallels so that I can run everything at the same time without having to reboot, but for the times (probably 50%) when I don't need to be running Sage, how do I turn off the Windows bit?

Ta all,

Fiona

I highly recommend the free "Microsoft Security Essentials". I use it on all my Win machines. It's free, self updating, works for AV, anti-malware, and is rated fairly high by PC Mag and others.

MSE is a good choice, as is Avast! and Avira.

I have used Avira for years, never had any issues. Only thing that can be annoying with Avira is it has ads sometimes.

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus
avast! Free Antivirus - Download Software for Virus Protection

Either of these 3 are all great options and will not disappoint.

Check out: http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests for some tests, performance tests etc.

AVG for free has no ads and as its name suggests its free.

I also recommend MSE. Free, does the job.

Fabulous, thank you people. I have gone for MSE

And I've worked out how to turn off Windows 7 as well. Was much easier than I thought.... I think my brain is addled! (and also I've been Mac-ified for too many years now!)

Thanks peeps.

Fiona