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On Saturday, we asked you which antivirus software you use on your personal desktop.

Thank you to everyone who took park in the poll. Here are the results:

As we did with the poll about XP Mode, I’ll share what I learned and what’s next.

What Did I Learn from this?

• To state the obvious, Microsoft Security Essentials is the most popular (by a long way), which is impressive considering how bad its predecessor (OneCare) was and that it’s only been available for about a year.
• Avast!, AVG, and Comodo are popular choices, which I expected; however, I expected to see more people using Symantec Norton Antivirus and McAfee Virus Scan (due to how many PCs come bundled with a full/trial version of these programs.)
• Just over 10% of you are using another program (although quite a number of those who entered the name of the other program missed the option from the list), which brings the number down to 7%.
• Very few of you use no security product (which also surprises me.)

What’s Next?

We don’t want to make you paranoid and, just by looking at these results, you are doing the right thing by using security software (if you feel you don’t need to, then you either a. don’t need to or b. probably have had no problems–yet–hence the lack of need.)

Expect to see a continued flow of security-related articles (did you see the PC Security Handbook Second Edition?) and a deeper look into some of the programs listed above.

For now, take a look at these recent articles:

• Top 5 Free Anti-malware Programs [2010 Edition]
• The Complete Guide to Protecting Your PC with Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE)
• 5 Things You Should Know About Microsoft Security Essentials
• 6 Signs Of Malware Infections
• More Signs of Malware Infections & How to Find Them [Intermediate]

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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