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Free antivirus apps part 3: Clamwin

Cyril Roger

Cyril Roger

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clamwin.jpgOn to the third of our five part series on free antivirus applications, today we cover Clamwin the only open source program in our selection. You would be mistaken to dismiss Clamwin just because of its unattractive interface. Using up only 26 MB of memory, Clamwin can smoothly scan without interrupting the flow of your other applications. That’s a good thing, because a full scan took us nearly two hours and a half. Surprisingly, with only 45,475 files scanned, half as much as Avast!, Clamwin still managed to find 6 different pieces of malware that neither Avast! nor AVG picked up.

The default configuration of the antivirus means it will only report viruses; you’ll then have to choose between removing or quarantining them. The progress window will inform you of malware it picks up, but there’s no way of knowing how far in the scan you’ve progressed. However it’s good to know that Clamwin automatically unloads infected programs from your PC memory, lightening up your CPU usage. During the process, the program will give priority to executables and it will also check mail in your Outlook for any viruses. Taking a look at the different features in the program, we liked the scan scheduler and filters you can set to exclude files from your scan. Overall, we were very satisfied with the way Clamwin performed and, although it looks quite unattractive, we believe it’s a very good solution to protect your PC.

Clamwin test results:

  • Uses 26 MB of memory
  • Full scan time: 2:21:00
  • Scanned objects: 45,475
  • Scan scheduler
  • Set filters to exclude files from scanning
  • Ugly interface
  • No information on scan progress
  • Default only reports virus; you can then remove or quarantine it
  • Automatically unloads infected programs for Computer Memory
  • Automatically scans EXEs and emails

Free antivirus apps part 1: AVG

Free antivirus apps part 2: Avast! Home

Cyril Roger

Cyril Roger

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