I avoided AV software for most of my life. Though, when I worked as a student admin, I would always install AV for the majority of my users. Most users (especially older) simply could never learn not to download that cool new &#x27;freeware&#x27; app or game or not double click a downloaded exe (the fact that hidden extensions are still the default on Windows OS is absurd).<p>As a more savvy user, I did not desire the typical AV bloatware (Norton, McAfee, etc) stealing up half my cycles and spinning the hard drive without pause. I knew enough not to try and &#x27;open&#x27; resume.doc.exe.<p>However, AV&#x27;s have trimmed down, SSDs are becoming more common place, and it seems the biggest attack vector is browser based. For the last few years, I&#x27;ve run a few different AVs (Kaspersky, ESET, Bitdefender are decent).<p>I run adblockers, don&#x27;t install Flash games or Applets, but it is nearly impossible to stop all browser based attacks. I&#x27;m not sure the AVs have helped much, but they give some sort of psychological benefit, at least.<p>There really is no good solution anymore unless you&#x27;re willing to give up 90% of the web (via NoScript or using a primitive console based browser). I believe the future for tech-aware users will be browsers in some sort of container &#x2F; VM that reset themselves upon each session, with absolutely no control to the file system or data from other sites.