[DigeratiPrime]

^ broken link

[Jeremy]

DigeratiPrime, on Mar 31 2006, 10:40 PM, said:

^ broken link

Then your ISP must be having problems because it works fine.

[DigeratiPrime]

my isp is optimum online, i dont think its them:

[At0mic]

I get that error as well

[Zxian]

Makes three of us with the broken link.

By the way - I recommend NOD32. All of the good reasons, and very very few of the bad.

[Stead]

link doesn't work here either...

[tal ormanda]

Zone Alarm Security Suite

[Jeremy]

Ah, they got rid of the article, bastards. it worked 2 days ago. I should have saved it. Oh well.

[WolfX2]

i'm sure i would like nod32 of they sold it anywhere in alberta *sigh*

[rotjong]

Press any key, on Mar 28 2006, 06:55 PM, said:

Then I used InoculateIt which was a free version of some Aust . product I think. They scraped the free version, so I switched to AVG.

Yes, InoculateIT was a free release from Computer Associates. They killed it off when they released the very affordable [but not free] eTrust EZ Antivirus.

Press any key, on Mar 28 2006, 06:55 PM, said:

I do not believe that you should have to pay to protect the operating system; that's a defect; no matter that some third party is attacking your business - you should protect your users free.

So, Microsoft, buy NOD32 and give it to me free with Vista. And pigs might fly again!

I agree in that one shouldn't require a third-party AV to protect an OS. However, this is one of those in an ideal world deals for me. As it stands we don't live in one and I doubt we ever will. The last thing in the world I'd want is MS to acquire Eset or just about any other AV company. God help us if they picked Symantec... can you imagine the bloated pile of dung they'd release? I have enough issues with MS' security problems w/o depending on them for an AV product as well. I foresee an MS AV product being like Symantec with their seemingly endless discoveries of flaws in their security and antivirus products. So very ironic.

After enough years experimenting with a ton of different AVs I've settled on using Eset NOD32 for my day-to-day AV. For me it has the best of everything I need and doesn't bog down my system. It might not be empirically ranked as the number 1 AV product but it's close enough.

rotjong

[Coco]

I'm like a few others here, I don't use Anti-vitus. Once a year or so I tend think I may have done somehting stupid and got a virus and I use something like housecall. Which almost always turns up nothing, and then I realize I just misconfigured an app.

As long as you pay attention to what you are doing there really isn't much call for anti virus, it's just a bloated mess that slows a computer down. I've had more problems with nortons antivirus solutions then I've ever had with a virus.

Of course, not everyone pays close attention or knows how to pay close attention. I install AVG on computers for friends and family that arn't as computer savy.

This post has been edited by Coco: 02 April 2006 - 11:50 PM

[rotjong]

Coco, on Apr 3 2006, 05:48 AM, said:

I'm like a few others here, I don't use Anti-vitus. Once a year or so I tend think I may have done somehting stupid and got a virus and I use something like housecall. Which almost always turns up nothing, and then I realize I just misconfigured an app.

As long as you pay attention to what you are doing there really isn't much call for anti virus, it's just a bloated mess that slows a computer down. I've had more problems with nortons antivirus solutions then I've ever had with a virus.

I was like you for many years. I experimented with different AVs on a test computer I had but I never ran one on my main system. I'd compare them to see what AV caught what virus, etc. Personally, I'd prefer to still not run one but alas I decided that statisically speaking I'm about due to get hit by something. I use common sense and I'm always careful but sometimes that's not enough. I didn't run a real-time AV until probably last year. So figure I lasted 15 yrs w/o getting hit by a virus. I figure I might as well just add that one extra line of defense and NOD32 doesn't really use many resources. I actually can't tell the difference on my system between when it's running or when it's not.

rotjong

[Indyan]

I am using Kaspersky. It wins in almost very AV shootout.

[Jeremy]

Coco, on Apr 3 2006, 01:48 AM, said:

there really isn't much call for anti virus, it's just a bloated mess that slows a computer down.

You can't just be so prejudiced towards AVs in general, though. Norton is bloated and slows down PCs that have less than 1GB of RAM. NOD32 and Kaspersky are awesome. Like I've said before, the fact that an AV is free / open source or takes up 50 KBs of memory aren't factors for a proper evaluation of it to be based on. And yes, most of us have AV for that sense of security, but it's just a good thing to have incase you ever download a RAR file, for example, from Shareaza or whatever and want to make sure it is safe to open. You may have your ports blocked and router and software firewall, but if you intentionally download a file that potentially contains a virus, a router won't do anything and a software firewall will only prevent outbound traffic for the virus. With something like NOD32 and Kaspersky, you can just disable the GUI from start-up and have the Service itself running in the background, so you can then manually open the GUI and update, then run that when you feel like it. When you're done, you can shut it down and be on your way. How much better can it get?
I tend not to trust most freeware anti-virus programs because think about what goes on at the companies of these programs. For Symantec, there are thousands of people just sitting there writing up innoculations for these viruses. At one point Symantec laid off ~1900 employees. If you're laying off that many people, obviously you've got thousands more to sustain that level of productivity. See, Symantec shares the innoculations with other companies, Kaspersky for example. It's a business strategy.
Now, with open source, you've got one guy from this country, another guy from that country, a few here and a few there, and obviously they aren't going to have nearly as much work done as a major corporation.
You basically have to see behind the scenes in a sense, to further determine which AV is best to use. For me, personally, the top 3 are:
Symantec AntiVirus Corporate 10 (not the Norton family)
Kaspersky
NOD32

[Jeremy]

Just switched back to Kaspersky.

[noguru]

Quote

I tend not to trust most freeware anti-virus programs because think about what goes on at the companies of these programs. For Symantec, there are thousands of people just sitting there writing up innoculations for these viruses. At one point Symantec laid off ~1900 employees. If you're laying off that many people, obviously you've got thousands more to sustain that level of productivity. See, Symantec shares the innoculations with other companies, Kaspersky for example. It's a business strategy.
Now, with open source, you've got one guy from this country, another guy from that country, a few here and a few there, and obviously they aren't going to have nearly as much work done as a major corporation.

But the free available AV's that I know of are not open source.
They are trimmed versions of commercial products without any support offered. But they use the same av-definitions like their commercial counterfits, made by the same people. Not a guy here and there (when they have time!).

That paid software has it benefits is something I won't deny. If it did not it would probably not exist.

[Jeremy]

noguru, on Apr 8 2006, 09:42 PM, said:

But the free available AV's that I know of are not open source.
They are trimmed versions of commercial products without any support offered. But they use the same av-definitions like their commercial counterfits, made by the same people. Not a guy here and there (when they have time!).
That paid software has it benefits is something I won't deny. If it did not it would probably not exist.

Tell me something I don't know.

Anyway, a guy I work with used to write articles for Nvidia News and he knows his s*** when it comes to hardware, especially graphics cards and processors, chipsets, mobos. Anyway, just to hype his enormous amount of knowledge. He and another coworker spent a slow day testing anti-virus products on a "clogged sewer" of a machine and found that Symantec, McAfee and AVG (the more mainstream ones) were the best, in that, each found a few that another missed. That's not to say it's a not a very good product, it just boils down to who writes up the innoculation first. I think that if you use anything from Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky, NOD32, AVG... you'll do fine.

[Wesmosis]

Quote

I think that if you use anything from Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky, NOD32, AVG... you'll do fine.

Yeah that's the philosphy which I reached after a loooooooong debates and controversy about what's the best AV
I'm using NOD32 at the moment, but I'm convinced of that each AV that he will do his job as meant to be

[At0mic]

Have any of you actually tried all or most of these Antivirus products to give a definitive answer as to which ones are the best? If not I'll download every one to see which is best. At the moment I use Sophos but it uses 35Mb ram as a service and another 4Mb for its auto update service and seems to be slow. I want to change it for something else.

This post has been edited by At0mic: 13 April 2006 - 05:17 PM

[Jeremy]

Atomic, I know what Norton is like, I've tried McAfee, Symantec, Kasp, NOD32, Avast, BitDefender, AVG, etc. I also work in a tech shop where people have all sorts of AV's installed. To me, the memory usage is a small factor when considering which AV to use, because it's about how effectively it can be set up to protect you. We install AVG Free Edition for people at the tech shop, but we have Kaspersky 6 on all of our PCs, whereas we also had AVG. Once we scanned with Kaspersky, 6 viruses were found on the network where AVG was sitting for over a year. See, an AV is a lot like a registry cleaner in that, they will all find some infections that others will miss.
To me, an AV shouldn't have a pop-up blocker, spam filter or a firewall. That what AdMuncher and Outpost are for. See, I wouldn't use BitDefender because it has so many processes running, much like Norton, plus it has the firewall and etc. Kaspersky and NOD32 however, have the web filter, the e-mail filter, the file system monitor and the on-demand scanner, and they both take up relatively the same amount of memory. Less than 20MBs when Idle I do believe.
McAfee is a bit heavy, but their definitions are very good. I haven't been able to install Symantec on my system for some reason, so unfortunately, I am unable to give an opinion on it.
Conclusion: McAfee, Symantec, Kaspersky, NOD32. Those 4 are the best IMHO.