Need an anti-virus program?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Miros
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unfortunately they'll probably only honor one of your four rebates unless you have four different addresses. :p
 
Trippyhippy said:
Avast is much better than AVG. It's free as well, for home use.
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It is? I was just happy to see an anti-virus program for free. I know I'm building a new PC this summer and figured I may as well get this for free while I'm at it.

Good to know about Avast though. I'll have to look into them instead. Still hopefully gonna get a rebate on those 4 though! lmao
 
Miros said:
It is? I was just happy to see an anti-virus program for free. I know I'm building a new PC this summer and figured I may as well get this for free while I'm at it.

Good to know about Avast though. I'll have to look into them instead. Still hopefully gonna get a rebate on those 4 though! lmao
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In my personal opinion, avast is better than Avg, Norton, McAfee or Kaspersky.
 
Anything is better than Norton Internet Bloat and McAfee.
 
Tristam Green said:
Anything is better than Norton Internet Bloat and McAfee.
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Exactly, Norton is the worst performance hog ever, and McAfee is like intentionally installing a virus on your computer.

NOD32 > all though.
 
It's not, unless you pirate it.

NOD32 is the only program to date that I've pirated for a long time(~2 years); and then actually paid for because I loved the product so much. There's only been a few programs period that I've paid for after pirating, and all of those were because I used the pirating as a demo.
 
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We recently built a test center and did a review on a lot of popular programs. We needed a solution. We were using Sym Ent and ultimately decided to stay with it.

Symantec is one of the best along with ESET NOD32. They supported almost equal "full set" of detection features, used on average 50 megs of ram and stayed under 10% utilization when working under default settings. For those who say Symantec is bloatware, you're wrong.

Everything else had subpar performance most of them utilizing too many processor cycles for background work or residing in memory too long. Those who say McAfee sucks, well they've gotten noticably better in the last 3 years, but not as much as Symantec has. McAfee has a true "internet protection" setup like symantec and ESET NOD32 that Avast and AVG do not include. (spam, firewall, parent controls etc). Edit: Sadly McAfee is still a memory hog, taking up as much memory as Avast and AVG, free or otherwise.

Avast and AVG are both mediocre. Only difference is Avast supports rootkit/admin protection and AVG does not. However they both still suck up over 100 megs of memory when idle and has little consideration for other programs while running. I've read somewhere they both also have poor definition list, possibly due to a slow update and have poor application support, not a surprise.

For the home user, Symantec and NOD32 are your best options. Get them anyway you can. Try not to pirate since it's illegal *rollseyes* lol. BT is your friend.
 
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Symantec is one of the best along with ESET NOD32
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Symantec makes norton, they suck hard; it's a far cry from being "one of the best."
 
I know who makes Norton. How do they suck exactly?

And I'm not talking about older versions that are 3-4 years dated.
 
Princemercury said:
I know who makes Norton. How do they suck exactly?

And I'm not talking about older versions that are 3-4 years dated.
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Not as good coverage as several other brands, still a system hog; less direct control over the behavior of their software. They're better than they used to be, but still not close to the best.
 
From what we've tested, Norton the home version, not talking about Symantec 10/11 now had a footprint of 10MB smaller than NOD32. For it being a system hog, it runs near 0 and up to 10% just as NOD32 does. While scanning, Norton was actually faster because of it's indexing service, one thing NOD doesn't have. As far as behavior selection newest NOD32 has just about everything Norton offers. Email, internet security, layered file scanning, the list goes on of course.. What am I missing and what's better than Norton?
 
Princemercury said:
From what we've tested, Norton the home version, not talking about Symantec 10/11 now had a footprint of 10MB smaller than NOD32.
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That's impressive, since NOD32, with every feature turned on, is using a whopping 4.3MB on my system. Even running a full system scan, it's only using 5.5MB.

While scanning, Norton was actually faster because of it's indexing service, one thing NOD doesn't have.
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Faster scanning does not mean better; I wouldn't want my anti-virus to index my whole system, because that makes it easier to miss things that aren't obvious virus activity. And index usually just means the program's sorted everything and is only giving the system a full once-over to see if anything's different. When I do a full-scan, I want it to go over my computer with a fine-tooth comb and notice if a file is doing things that it shouldn't; not just check to see if any extra files were added or something like that. And while it's scanning, it's not effecting my computing power at all, I can do whatever I want without any impediment.

Email, internet security, layered file scanning, the list goes on of course.. What am I missing and what's better than Norton?
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Just because it does the same thing doesn't mean it does it as well or better. A Ford Taurus gets you where you need to go, but it's not nearly as good as a Mercedes. The heuristics on NOD32 detect more virus/worm/whatever like activity than Norton does, offering better protection, and at a lower footprint.

Where is this testing going on, the Symantec HQ? You're the only one who thinks Norton's any good, so it's pretty suspicious that you're saying it's just as good(now it's better, actually) as the top anti-virus software.
 
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http://www.av-comparatives.org/home


*making no claims, just tossing this out there for people who want test data.

*Please make note of the disclaimer in their reports, that you should do your own evaluation.
 
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Norton 360 is fast and good. And thats the first time I can honestly say that about any Norton product.

Some new polymorphic viruses though will force you folks to try some off brands like Kapersky or Dr. Web.

If you do get such viruses steer clear of AVG. It will totally destroy your data. Did for me anyway.
 
I did a test on a single client machine since I assume that's what you were doing the controlled test on.

Symantec took only 2.6 MB of memory scanning over 200GB of junk I put on the computer, with every option turned on (just a bunch of mp3, random exe, videos and documents I copied and pasted over and over again). If you want to get in the nitygrity it also took another 4 MB for the systray icons. My 10 MB comparison was from the test we did at our lab when we were doing remote scanning under a managed antivirus system, sorry for the confusion.

You are right, index doesn't always mean it's better. I was just saying it was able to do it faster because it had the engine built in. When it's on it does a differential sweep of the system. But when you check every option to do a full 'fine tooth' scan, it doesn't apply to the sequential daily checkups. Anyway, the full scan took about 14 mins under full options.

Symantec's solution actually detects more than NOD's AV. I don't have time do intentionally put viruses/malware on comps to test that out but general reviews all over the net state so with great detail. So I would have to stay with Symantec offering better protection. As far as lower footprint, my tests show managed or unmanaged, Symantec still is lower.

The antivirus package test we did was at my job, in a controlled lab, where we test several software titles before implementing them in our network. Just because I happen to be the only one, before, to stand by Symantec doesn't mean I work for Symantec.

As far as which one is better? I think I said they were about the same before and maybe gave the hint that Symantec is better later on, either way they're both the best on the market today imo with Symantec a bit in the lead.
 
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HijackThis! and Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware.
 
Just to throw my two cents in there, from my experience Norton IS 09 (360 is just IS with set it and forget it simplicity) is infinitely better than any older versions. The footprint of it is under 10 mb of memory, install takes under 10 minutes, and the scans are fast and very thorough.

That being said, Avast is still free, which does everything just as good as Norton 09 with a slightly larger memory footprint.
 
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