The Definitive "BEST ANTIVIRUS" thread

[MxxCon]

i'm so sick of these threads poping up every single week. so here's the one and only thread you should need untill the end of your life. moderator can modify poll entries to update.

BEST ANTIVIRUS

[[X]]

LOL @ m0fo

I use PC-Cillin 2002, NAV was hogging my system resources

[noir]

F-Prot from Frisk, small, cheap, memory efficient and does what it's supposed to.

[Apollo]

LOL

NAV2k3 works flawlessly for me and it's the best i've tried.

[Impulfusion]

Norton AntiVirus, it's true that it eats ressources but it never sleeps and it's bad on Viruses, well at least for me... :shifty:

[ozric]

After seeing McAfee at work in an organisation of 1500 pc's of different varieties, I would not touch it with a barge pole.

Illegal operations, slowing down of the PC, not picking up new virii even with updates, the lack of support from McAfee itself (denying problems that have been proved time and time again) and even an update crashing two brands of PC causing chaos to a third of our users.

For AV at home I use the one built into Ontrack's Fix-it Utilities, never any problems, free updates and the bonus that Fix-it is such a useful utility anyway.

[AcdShdw]

NAV !

[Veedems Veteran]

AVG Free Edition

[Jon]

After seeing McAfee at work in an organisation of 1500 pc's of different varieties, I would not touch it with a barge pole.

Illegal operations, slowing down of the PC, not picking up new virii even with updates, the lack of support from McAfee itself (denying problems that have been proved time and time again) and even an update crashing two brands of PC causing chaos to a third of our users.

Hmmm you arn't ISG by any chance are you? (Steve.. Tim?)

Geee.. dissing my AV implementation :)

The illegal operations were minimal on XP from what I saw, and any persistant problems were resolved with patches.

Obviously things may have changed since I left ISG in september.

Also the support wouldn't come from McAfee, but NAI or the vendor you bought the TVD/AVD package from.

and even an update crashing two brands of PC causing chaos to a third of our users

Well someone should learn to test the dats before deploying them shouldn't they :)

Personally I use AVG Free Edition. NAV is bloated to hell and back, I *really* dislike norton products, McAfee doesnt streamline its products for home use (think about how much CPU power an office PC has above its word processing demands, they have room to be slack). AVG is discrete, updates regularly, features heuristics and configurable levels of scanning, and functions just as well.

The thing a lot of people fail to notice is that all main AV products perform *equally* as well under industry tests, the variations experienced in the public are (probably) largly down to user misconfiguration of active scanning options.

As far as I'm concerned, the best AV is the one that sets itself up at an acceptable level on installation, bugs you the least, and can be killed when you want to play games.

I bet most of the people who complain about performance hits fail to kill the processes whilst gaming... seriously, what do you expect :)

[Samoa]

nough said. ;)

AVG

[Moparx]

i'd use avg.. but they have only passed once out of 19 tests done by virus bulletin. ( only pass was in 2000 - http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/pro...cts.xml?avg.xml )

so currently i use avast! 4, which is also a decent AV & has passed virus bulletin's tests (every test this year except for one)

[Stunod7]

I might use NAV but working in the computer industry I've had too many bad experiances with it... If you do not have a virus on your machine and it's in good working order and you are willing to pay for updates outside of a year (which I am not) then I'd say NAV.

If you have the need to actually remove a virus that's already there and your computer is on a downward spiral I would suggest QuickHeal primarly because it installs in safe mode and you can download the updates and install them seperatly so you don't need to be connected to the internet... I guess that's another trouble shooting method.

So if you are well off with your PC now NAV but if you are having problems installing NAV because of virus or other PC issues I'd go QuickHeal.

Just my 2 cents :whistle:

[Jon]

i'd use avg.. but they have only passed once out of 19 tests done by virus bulletin. ( only pass was in 2000 - http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/pro...cts.xml?avg.xml )

Hm thats pretty scarey, I'm not quite sure what those tests are doing, and trying to prove, but the results are way off the mark, given the opinion of most AV professionals, and the VXers.

After tommorrows exam i'll do some more poking into it, but at the moment, I think its safe to say those tests are somewhat quirky.

[iwod]

To what i think............. i rarely ever get a virus. And nearly most AV today said they can scan howmany Virus..... i don't trust those numbers.... so in a way i could assume most of today well known ( or all the AV program mention here ) do pretty much the same in protecting us...

What i am interested in is how much resources each AV uses....

So which AV uses the lowest resources???

As many people seems to say that PC Cillin 2003 uses the lowest resources.... any proof??

[Jon]

What i am interested in is how much resources each AV uses....

Thats my point.

Virtually all of the main stream AV products perform the same when it comes to virus's in the wild, the only variables worth judging on are resources used, configuration ability, and more importantly, frequency of updates.

<Minirant>

A lot of inexperienced people here slag of AV products, with no real basis, purely because they saw one bsod or a (often imagined) performance hit . Like I said before, McAfee isn't *bad*, they just write AV products for Office desktops, which generally have a lot of unused resources. I mean really, does one instance of outlook and word really need 1.4gig+256meg of ram? (Obviously XP doesnt help, but its still overkill).

The setup of the AV client is very important. You need to seriously think about whether you need heuristics, do you need constant inbound and outbound scanning, and scheduled scans. Do the dat updates actually update the scanned file list, or should you be updating it manually, do you want to scan all files instead, how deep to you scan embedded archieves / compressed files. Most people just hit next>next>finish and assume they are protected.

Wrong.

If you have a stunning AV client, but its only set to update once a month, no offence but you may as well uninstall it.

(look at the propagation speed of yr b4 last's star performers, codered and nimda, then klez)

</MiniRant>

[Samoa]

With Windows XP, recources are not a problem. And as for AVG not passing someone's test.... I have not gotten one single virus infecting my computer since I have used it. Of course I don't use Kazaa or Morpheus or ICQ, etc.. to get viruses. But I have been alerted from time to time of a virus captured by AVG which prevented a problem by killing the virus and healed some files so I could use them.

[Jon]

With Windows XP, recources are not a problem.

lol and what planet were you on when that thought came to you ?

Of course resources can be a problem, it doesnt matter what OS you're using.

[NeoMayhem]

ALL Anti Virus programs suck, there is no reason to have one if you dont open viruses :p

[Jon]

ALL Anti Virus programs suck, there is no reason to have one if you dont open viruses

Unless you have something intelligent to say, i suggest you say nothing.

[Ji@nBing]

i used to use nortons but just switched to AVG and i'm very happy with it. my system runs faster without nortons. it is too much of a system hog

[stockwiz]

norton antivirus corporate edition version 8.0 ... 7.xx also works fine too but why use it when i can use 8.0

[ein]

To what i think............. i rarely ever get a virus. And nearly most AV today said they can scan howmany Virus..... i don't trust those numbers.... so in a way i could assume most of today well known ( or all the AV program mention here ) do pretty much the same in protecting us...

What i am interested in is how much resources each AV uses....

So which AV uses the lowest resources???

As many people seems to say that PC Cillin 2003 uses the lowest resources.... any proof??

Same here, those number can be bogus. They can enlist some very obsecure or legacy virus inside the list too

PC Cilin is the reason for CIH to born in this world... so I won't recommend PC Cilin to anyone ;)

AVG is working good enough for me. I think those tests AVG don't pass are those tests for virus-gonna-be testing. I don't want to hear my AV program giving me false alarm when I'm just opening a normal .jpg or .mid file. (Yes, my friend's NAV did give him an alert when he open up a mid file, but that is just a warning that the code it scan smells like virus)

[Guest jkcs]

nav corp 8 can only be used on server based windows right? i tried installing on winxp and it doenst work. only when i used win2k adv server then it installed itself. correct me if i'm wrong. :)

[Icarus ^i^]

Norton has never let me down :)

[MitchShrader]

gack, norton. bleh. retch. Pc cillin is not too bad, Etrust is fair, Fprot aint terrible, mc affee is horrible, norton is Very Well Advertised for its cost, Avg is fine for home users, Nod 32, and Kapersky are the two i'd recommend anyone who has a serious interest in prevention of financial and data loss evaluate. Norton, feh. read up on real world tests. of COURSE you like norton if you hardly ever get a virus , and want a user friendly , well known, haphazardly updated overpriced resource hogging virus scanner. Onna OTHER hand, go where the water is murky and there's a virus in half the downloads you encounter, (figure it out) and ask folks there what THEY use..and its NOD, Kapersky, and not much else. Whats your risk level, and your exposure if you're Wrong? Nod32 works mighty fine, and Kapersky is arguably right there with it.

[Sierra]

i won't tell what i use. others could take advantage of this and i would like to keep my system virus free :) btw, i'm using nav corporate .... lol