Five free security software suites

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It offers malware recognition to catch viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, and worms, and automatically updates anti-virus signatures. There are also a number of scanning options, allowing a user to scan internal and external drives.

According to PC Pro's review, this is one of the best software packages when it comes to malware detection. However, unlike AVG and Avast, it doesn’t scan emails, which means you could have something malicious in your inbox.

Last month, Avira made changes to its update system, which means that users do not have to face delays while waiting for the system to perform updates.

There is one annoyance in that Avira occasionally comes up with ads, while there is a nag screen that follows updates which asks you to buy the full version.

However, considering this is one of the best free malware detectors on the market, this could be a price you might be willing to pay.

ClamWin

This is unique in comparison to the other packages, in that it is based on open source code.

It is also one of the sparsest, in that it doesn’t carry an on-access real-time scanner. This means that you need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware, which most home users probably won’t want to bother with.

It also looks less commercial than some of the others, which makes sense due to its open source nature.

One aspect of the software that some will find useful is its add-on to Microsoft Outlook that will remove virus-infected attachments automatically. This is not a feature available on some of the commercial anti-virus products such as Avira.

An interesting feature of ClamWin is that there is a portable app available, so you can take the anti-virus with you on a USB drive and scan files on the go.

Read on for five free alternative office suites.

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