Free Antivirus systems

A few years ago the notion of free antivirus programs was almost unthinkable, don't get me wrong they were around but using them meant very little protection.
Today however, things have changed, antivirus systems have become much more reliable, and for the average home user it's absolutely free.
I rebuilt an old computer a couple weeks ago and when I finally got the operating system up and running I went online to find an antivirus system for it. I checked out two free systems and loaded and ran both. (one at a time) The first antivirus I found was AVG antivirus, loaded it in approx. five minutes, took me another ten to go through the user interface and set it up. AVG has quite a lot going for it, within minutes I could set up antivirus, spyware, malware, and all the bells and whistles that went with them. The full compliment of programs built into one download was impressive for a free antivirus and actually surprised me. The one complaint I did have was the user interface, I found it hard to navigate and the entire thing could use some updated graphics.
So I took AVG off and loaded Avast onto the system. The first thing I noticed was how fast the antivirus loaded, the user interface was clean clear and much easier to navigate, and the program had a fresh look and feel to it. Avast does have a few things going for it which I like and would use regularly, the first being the boot time scan, allowing the scan to start before windows starts has a definite advantage when you're trying to get rid of a virus that keeps attacking your antivirus when it starts up. The second is sandboxee, a virtual zone where Avast will open any suspicious program inside the sandbox and allow you to play, allowing the program to make any changes it wants because the sandbox is a virtual state. Once the program closes the virtual state disappears and any changes made by the program disappear with it. I got a chance to play around with this feature a little and it's pretty impressive.
What I didn't like about Avast is the fact that you have to pay if you want the malware and spyware add ons. So the Avast system isn't really free if you want the full meal deal. Find out more @ http://www.frostysplace.ca/Antivirus.html