Best, free, intrusive and Windows only

I happen to know a bunch of people that don’t spend money on software, even if we’re talking antivirus programs and who frankly don’t like spending money on anything computer related unless it’s really necessary for them to work with. Even their Windows is OEM so they didn’t actually think they paid for it.

All these people expect me to provide them with free alternatives that are just as good as paid software which is obviously impossible so I try to give them the next best thing.

So when it comes to antivirus software I usually go for Panda Cloud as it has a very lightweight engine and it’s capable to work with devices that have cheap hardware which is obviously low performance hardware too.

But the problem is that it’s way too intrusive with upgrade offers. You can’t even start downloading the damn thing as it hits you with a 40% upgrade offer:

If you skip the offer and go to the download page you’re taken to a CNET download page which offers you the same damn thing but with 50% and in US$:

If you skip that too the downloader gives you a .exe file which is obviously Windows native, regardless if you download from OSX or some *nix OS because although it’s advertised as being compatible with Mac and Linux the free version is only compatible with Windows:

It’s also worth mentioning that when installing the damn thing on a Windows box it will still ask you if you wanted a discounted upgrade (3rd time) and ask you again after being installed, because yeah! after you skipped it 3 times you’ll surely reconsider.