I've used Webroot Antivirus for years on my laptop and desktop at home...never had a single virus...easy renewal each year too. Think it is about $35 for 2 machines per year?
i use the paid for version of AVAST. i got along fine with free shtuff forever though. had a PC or two since the early to mid 90s. never had a virus on my home or personal computer. once on a work computer. but, i blame the work IT guys for that. i never had admin authority on it. anyway... now that i can afford it and have multiple computers to protect, i just pay for it. one plan covers 3 computers i think. probably a waste of $
Been using Avast Free version for years. Highly rated and easy to stay up to date although they beg you to upgrade to the paid version every once in a while. For what I need it's more than enough. I run CC Cleaner and Malwarebytes every once in a while just to check to turn off junk that automatically installs on startup. Keeps the 'puter from getting bogged down with stuff that doesn't need to run in the background. Generally I turn off the stuff like Adobe and Java updaters that run in the background and want to update itself. I don't turn off anything that's Windows related from Microsoft or updates for my printer.
Do this too as espringers mentioned: "i never had admin authority on it." Basically this means that whichever "account" you sign into your computer with on a daily basis, make it a Standard type user and not a Administrator type user. This prevents you from accidentally installing some crap.