Bitdefender and Kaspersky in my opinion. BTW, this question is answered million times, please use search
I was using avast! (which is second on the AV list) for quite some time, but as it happens it allowed ridiculous amount of viruses through, I don't even know how. I've heard from my service man that avast! was not to be trusted (although he keeps installing MSE everytime I have any computer serviced, so I don/t know if he's to be trusted), so now I'm using AVG, which after uninstalling AVG TuneUp (that installs itself automatically, gods know what for...) is not even that annoying if not for false positives it gives me once a week at least... I've heard that ESET was good and I'm surprised that it's so low on the list. I'm interested what others think, cuz I'm still looking for a perfect ativirus, if such exists
Hmm, I think most using MSE is because it's simple, supported and fairly efficient (performance wise). It's more like a lazy: You must have something at least. Usually you can avoid virus just being careful. The times I've been infected was because me taking deliberate risks, but I guess it depends on habits though. Currently I'm using Symantec Endpoint Protection on Windows 2012 R2 and I'm pretty happy with it.
I'm using avast free in my windows os, same as urie and yen, lightweight, have the auto sandbox so we can check the unknown application harmfull to our windows os or not.
I think Kaspersky is the of available options. Been using kaspersky Pure for more than a year, had absolutely no problems whatsoever !
I use Avast!, Malwarebytes Pro and Hitman Pro as my preferred approach. Unlike the first two, I seldom see Hitman Pro triggering on a hit. I am assuming that is because my first two solutions aren't leaving anything for Hitman to detect. Again, just an assumption, as Hitman has fairly good reviews.
Yes, PfSense is simlar to Smoothwall. I tested PfSense some time ago about the Load balancing feature used with 4 different ADSL accounts from different ISP's but was running as smoth as the load balancing in Smothwall. The service from the PfSense community also wasn't that good as Smoothwall. Beside my own companies network, I use it Smothwall by six of our customers and that's the most secure system of all our customers. Even using by some others the expensive Cisco and Netscreen Hardware Firewalls, the smothwall system are way more secure because of it's much wider use of Ad On's!