It becomes hard to choose the best antivirus 2011 simply because with all the many antivirus software products that are being sold in the market these days, people will definitely ask themselves, are all antivirus the same? No. Although every antivirus promises the best protection from computer threats such as computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses, not every one of these antivirus software products will give similar satisfying results. Some might even fail big time. Some of the best know antivirus software companies also offer the best antivirus software products.

There are a lot of entities that continuously provide in depth reviews on these different products and give awards to products that provide exemplary results. Definitely, in whatever endeavor, area, or industry, some will excel and other will not. This is also true with the antivirus industry. Some products are just better than others. To know which is better means to research more about each.

But given that the detection methods of antivirus software almost follow similar techniques, are all antivirus the same? Again, the answer is no. Even if two different products employ the same signature-based method or the heuristic method or both, the way these products conduct these methods still differ from each other. The signature definition of one antivirus software company is not the same with another. The results from a scan will definitely have differences in terms of the level of detection. Though others can detect, others will not. Also, not every antivirus software product use both the signature based method and the heuristic method.

Using both these methods will provide better protection for the computer or network. This is because the heuristic based method of detections is able to deal with zero-day threats, which can not be detected with the signature method. Zero-day threats are new threats that are not previously recorded. These may be totally new malware or usually a modification or mutation of previously recorded threats. Antivirus software products that can perform signature-based and heuristic scanning can yield better results than others, which only employ one technique.

Again, are all antivirus the same? Definitely not. In terms of pricing, difference is clear. Some antivirus software products are cheaper and others are expensive. Some antivirus companies also offer free versions while others do not. Sometimes the difference in a quality of product can be determined with its cost. But that is not a hard fact when talking about antivirus software. There may be advantages but to say that higher cost means better performance is over-assuming. There are also issues that even some tried and tested antivirus software brands face. Issues with false positives (applications scanned as a threat but are harmless), etc. A 100% threat detection rate is also yet to be achieved.