Avast wins this year's showdown, thanks to its strong protection against known and unknown threats. It also proved among the easiest antivirus programs to operate, and is actually as effective as many paid antivirus software suites.The top four (Avast, Microsoft Security Essentials, Avira, and AVG, in that order) by our final ratings detailed below are also the top four in terms of usage share. That’s good news, because it shows that users are becoming more knowledgeable about the threats they can encounter online, and the best way of dealing with them.
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