Panda Cloud Antivirus is lightweight and quite effective free antivirus (or you can choose to buy it and have extra features unlocked). Personally I am a big fan of Comodo Internet Security because of it’s effectiveness thanks to it’s sandbox technology (and because it’s free). However, Panda Cloud is a good alternative if you want an antivirus that does not ask questions, does not use lots of disk space (because it relies on the ‘cloud’ and thus it does not need to download and update it’s virus signatures), and does not use loads of memory. Thus Panda Cloud is ideal for computers that do not have lots of memory (less than 1Gb) or for people that do not wish to be bothered by popups asking you how you want to treat an unknown piece of software that you are trying to run.
Having an antivirus program not ask questions and make decisions for you can also have it’s disadvantages. Either it is less safe (if it by default allows unknown applications to run) or it is more restrictive (it will not allow you to run an unknown application that you know is safe). Panda Cloud does not have a sandbox like Comodo Internet Security does (that is how CIS deals with unknown software by still running it but in a safe environment), but still it’s pretty accurate and up-to-date when it comes to detecting malware.
However, just because you installed an antivirus does not mean that you are now 100% protected and can run any program you get in your mail or any website. With everything comes common sense. The safest way to protect your computer is to use a program like EaseUS Todo Backup or even better Acronis TrueImage Home and have it make daily backups of your entire Windows partition. Just in case a virus does get through, or even if your entire disk dies, you can still recover your system.
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