Same here, but to be fair it was a totally different age. These days anyone selling consumer antivirus is right up there with people selling "hydrogen water" to rubes. The whole landscape of PC security has changed so much!
What do you recommend now? I love crowdstrike at work but they don't appear to have a home user option so I've been recommending eset nod32. Wondering if there's somethign better for the home user?
Personally, I run Windows Pro specifically so I can disable antivirus. I run occasional (weekly) scans, and every now and then (maybe once a month) add a Malwarebytes scan into the mix. Built-in AV is plenty, and in my experience needs tuned so it's not as aggressive.
ahh, you don't have enough olds or youngs on your support list, lol. Crowdstrike has saved me at work numerous times from the over 55 crowd's inability to comprehend basic security practices and not having it at home has meant a few times completely wiping windows and restarting for my under 15 nieces and nephews.
I'm only talking about my personal machine here, we have Palo Alto at work (a forced downgrade from Sophos), but at home AV only gets in the way for me, so I opt to disable real time protection and just run scans regularly on my own.
That makes sense, and I'm not trying to say AV is useless, only that I personally am not willing to make the "performance hit for security" that comes with AV products. My machine is likely powerful enough to allow real time protection, but my history of low power machines has made it more of a force of habit to just shut it off completely.