People have a lot of myths and misconceptions about downloading an antivirus software as they think it probably interferes with the system’s performance and stops the functioning by 5%. Earlier, we knew that running the scans, deleting a virus, detection of threats, while done in the background, affected the processing of the system severely. Not only did it slow down the system, but it was also responsible for the system lagging sometimes as well.

However, nowadays, there is no dearth of technology. When an antivirus works in the background, the system is not used as the source of power as it is all done on the Cloud. Hence, the whole process is much lighter compared to the earlier days. Not just making Internet browsing safe but giving no interruptions is very important when it comes to the antivirus features, which indeed leads to a great customer experience. You need to understand what infected your system before you decide on whether the antivirus slowed down the function or the browsing of Internet.

Computers make our day-to-day life easier except for when a slow RAM or a virus blocks the working. Reasons for the system slowdown includes the fact that the RAM is not upgraded, too many applications are running in the processor, etc. However, if a virus has attacked the system, you have to do tasks from scratch, like reinstalling all apps, rebooting your system at times. Imagine downloading different kinds of unknown files which you do not know who sent and clicking on Internet pop-ups that said you are the lucky draw winner when you have not participated in. You need to avoid such ads. This increases the chance of virus spreading rapidly in the system.

Hence, an antivirus is quite important. Always go for a trusted source which you can update and run in your machine. Programs like Norton, McAfee and all are quite large in size and may remarkably slow down your system if the RAM is less than 2GB or 4GB. It is always recommended to use free and lightweight options like Bitdefender, Avast, AVG, Avira, etc.

These days, apart from ransomware, spyware and adware, there is one more malware that has come up called crapware which is quite common. It tricks you into installing the software without your knowledge, like a hidden file on another software. You can also do a custom check from your side by looking into the control panel and adding or removing programs you think are malicious or probably those programs which you do not want in your system.

Another misconception people have is about the upgrades on the antivirus, especially regarding hard disk space and RAM space. If you have the choice of going in for a new computer with a bigger RAM space and size, you should always go for it rather hanging on to an old system which cannot be updated at any cost because the system cannot take it. Imagine having software like Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Microsoft Office on a 2GB RAM computer. They cannot process all at once, and hence the running of an antivirus software will further slow down the system.

If a Kaspersky Antivirus software is installed on a 4-8GB RAM system, it will be lightning fast as the program promises. Unless you have enough crapware downloaded into your system, it will not slow down the system at least for a span of 6 years. If you have only 2GB RAM or less than that and have lot of unwanted and unused apps downloaded into your system, the same Kaspersky will not work smoothly. For example, Avira antivirus uses around 50MB space including temp files created and will do automatic scans. This automatic scan takes 15 minutes and checks almost 70-80 GB, assuming your hard disk space is 1TB. This will not interrupt the working of the latest PCs and laptops in any way.