An article from Softonic.

Thanks for the link. The article is interesting.

The "Survival Kit" mentioned in the article lacks disk images. With disk images, it is possible to restore the entire computer to an earlier state. I find them a very important way to stay secure.

I have planned to get rid of antivirus myself. However, one of the biggest problems surviving without antivirus is lack of certainty. You can't be certain whether your computer is infected or not.

Thus, I have decided to wait for several years before giving up antivirus software. I have also decided that I'll cancel my plan if antivirus has to rescue me even once during that time. Hasn't happened yet...

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I was using Windows XP without antivirus and firewall for years. I thought its safe because I didn't visit sites that can harm, regulary restore disk image, occassionally run a virus check with an on-demand scanner, etc. I was wrong. Somehow I got an infection (I guess it came from a third-party usb or external drive) and most of my portable collection was gone, I had to re-collect them (exe and dll files were corrupted).

So in theory you can be safe but sooner or later you'll be infected. If it's only a trojan or a not so agressive virus then you can get rid of it by restoring a disk image but if it's a nasty one you may found yourself in a situation I was.

I also used DeepFreeze and another similar software back then to start with a clean system on each reboot, which was great, but if you have more than one partition then this won't help you. And because even portables have their settings and they need to be reserved after reboot, you will need to put them on a non-freezed partition. So your system partition may be clean after reboot but others not.

So after all I decided to use an antivirus even if I know it slows down my machine and doesn't give perfect security.

Well, antivirus doesn't change anything in here.

I am running w/out AV for several years already. I got an infection too. It was entirely my fault and an AV may have saved me from this. I spend 15 minutes removing it and then another 2 hours digging in the system internals to make sure it was really gone.
It was well worth it.
For me the main problem with antiviruses is not speed but false positives though. I grew really sick of repeatedly having to shut up those idiots shouting that regular tools are malicious.

And I don't recommend it.
I am satisfied with it and it sure can be good, but for 99.9% of users running w/out an AV would be plain stupid. Actually I consider the guide to be harmful. It's barely useful for those that can follow it and still be relatively safe - and will drive numerous people to unsafe practices. It's really just scratching the surface, it talks up things that barely matter (and doesn't do it too great anyway) and many times mentions "common sense" - which is in this context an incorrect name for security awareness. You need quite deep understanding of how malware works, how can you catch it, how can you notice that you caught it and how can you deal with it if you caught it.

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The article talks about AV's slowing down boot-up and performance, but if that's your only beef, then it's stupid. Gaining 40 secs and then spending 2 hours getting rid of an infection doesn't sound all that smart to me. Common sense is indeed mistaken for security awareness here, like m^2 says, especially when dealing with performance: Spending 2 hours getting to know the in's and out's of my AV will also give me an optimized boot-time, simply by disabling those features I don't need (like running real-time shields while never using the associated services, or sandboxing almost everything by default, like Avast seems to do lately...). Disabling autostart for all those updaters like QuickTime, Adobe etc will give you more of a boost than disabling your AV. Your AV needs it's daily updates, QT and the likes don't. The result of that exercise will be more knowledge, not more ignorance.
The article also compares AV's with seatbelts and then goes on saying you can do without, because putting it on can be such a nuisance. Being tossed around inside a flipped-over armored car will make you wish you'd put them on.
I'm annoyed by false positives too, but that's a small nuisance compared to having to deal with a real infection. Running without an AV is only for experts, not for Joe Public who's merrily surfing at home or your local coffeeshop. Good thing however that the author states that too.
OT: LOL at the ppl in the comments over there arguing Linux vs. Windows. I run both and neither one OS is safer than the other. I prefer Linux, but I'm no fanboy, it's just because I have grown used to using a shell and scripting all sorts of stuff in sh/perl/python. Linux is not safer, or better, it's just... different :p

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GFA/P/S/SS$/O d- s: a>? C++ UL++++ P++@ L++ !E W+++ N++@ o K+ w O M V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP++>+++ t++ 5+ X++@ R !tv b+>++ DI++ D+ G e+++ h-->- r% y+

Wrong. There's a huge number of exploits aiming at holes in programs with Acrobat Reader being the most popular target (IIRC MS Office comes second).
Keeping software up to date is about as important as having an AV.

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Yes, but my point is, they usually don't release updates on a daily basis as is regular for security related software. I can go weeks without being prompted by Adobe for an update. I should have made that clearer.
I have a batch that runs (delayed 1 min) on startup. On even days those programs get updated, on odd days the batch exits. So atleast once every 48 hours it checks for updates. The programs themselves don't autostart and they don't autoupdate at login. The time my AV takes to boot is negligable compared to what they can add to the whole process. Sure I'm putting performance ahead of security here, but that's what the whole article is about anyway. It's a calculated risk and by far a much smaller risk than disabling my AV.

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GFA/P/S/SS$/O d- s: a>? C++ UL++++ P++@ L++ !E W+++ N++@ o K+ w O M V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP++>+++ t++ 5+ X++@ R !tv b+>++ DI++ D+ G e+++ h-->- r% y+

I've never used AV on my main computer, I do use a software firewall and run occasional MalwareBytes scans though. Never had a virus, worm, trojan or rootkit. If you are an experienced IT professional, you should know exactly what every process running on your machine is for, anything suspicious is quite obvious.

I did have a close call through the Java/Acrobat exploit, but I worked out what it was trying to do and shut it down before it could do its thing.

Interesting.

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i cannot agree with you more ..
i have never used Windows' Backup & Restore feature until Windows 7 came out.
With previous OSes, i was too occupied with BSODs and errors.

With Windows 7, it's so damn smooth, responsive, and error-free that i now have time to explore it's features.

I have an internal 160GB HD, 1 external 1TB HD hooked up via USB 2.0.
I use nothing but portable apps., which i create D Partition for.
The only apps. that are actually installed is ESET Smart Security & VMware Workstation.

With Windows 7 Backup & Restore: i can set everything up the way i like and once fully set up, i create a system image. I can then revert back to that image if something disastrous happens. I can even mount the image via Disk Utility and get files from an earlier state It takes approximately 5 minutes to backup C and Hidden Partition. It takes about the same time to restore. Best of all these images are "non-destructive" !
* off topic: i never understood why Windows 7 users would go out of their way to install a 3rd party app like Acronis when Windows 7 has a fully loaded Backup Utility.

As for Anti-Virus slowing down your computer: this depends on which AV you're using.
I used to be a Kaspersky Internet Security avid enthusiast but it seriously bogged down my PC.
With ESET, the difference is night and day. I switched to ESET a few weeks ago. The only thing missing is a System-wide Anti-Banner which Kaspersky had. But no big deal.. i've learned to deal with it by using the 'hosts' file and Fanboy's Opera Ad-block

As for running without it: i wouldn't because of all the tracking. But im behind a Router so i have most of "Services.msc" disabled which improves responsiveness dramatically... i.e. IKE & AuthIP, IPsec, TCP/IP Net BIOS, Server, Windows Firewall, etc.