My Final 3...any advice appreciated.

[Samjax]

After doing a fair amount of due diligence I have narrowed my new AV choice to the following.

KAV Professional
NOD 32
Extendia AVK Pro

KAV Pro due to the high reviews and favorable comments found here and other places. It is the most expensive of my final 3 choices...but the dollars aren't a big deal. Seems to place in the top tier of any AV tests I have found available on the internet...except for about.com who placed it 7th or 8th I think.

NOD 32 primarily due to its attractive price and the strong support and following found here at Wilders. Attractively priced and apparently it is light on system resources. From what I can read, it appears to do very well in certain AV tests and in others not quite so well. I'm sure there are reasons but I'm not an authority on such things. I can't imagine all the guys/gals here liking it as much as they do if it were only an average or above average AV though.

Extendia AVK Pro only because at $29 it's too tempting not to include it for what you get for the money. Apparently it uses the KAV and RAV scan engines and updates itself daily. Also appears to be very much if not the same as GSoft's AVK Pro...although that product uses the KAV engine and I think one by BD? Maybe Extendia is simply the American marketing effort of the original product? No clue...but the price is a bit less and the daily updates are included in the price unlike the original AVK version which charges for the daily update feature.

I have been a user of NAV and still have over 200 days left on my subscription...but a demo version of KAV found 5 viruses on my computer that NAV apparently couldn't...and I have NAV scheduled to run 3 scans a week (which it has been doing for the last couple of years) and my NAV updates are all current. I was a bit disappointed to say the least.

I know that such choices are a personal matter and preference...but since I have narrowed it down to 3, I figured that some wise counsel is in order.

Finally...I am not opposed to buying 2 of the above mentioned products if that is the best way to go. If so, please advise which 2.

Thanks.

[meneer]

Just get 1 of them.

Best to do is to try them all for yourself. All of these scanners are good enough, technically. I would get the 30 day version of all of them (not at the same time...) and try to get the feel. Do you like the user interface, how do you like the auto update and reporting functions and try the system load for yourself.

And really, they are all good enough :)

[optigrab]

Well put, Meneer. ;)

[gerardwil]

Hi,

If you gonna buy, I would advise only 1. You can download another free scanner as well for on-demand scanning.
I use the one attached. So far no probs. It looks for updates every hour (ADSL here), but I have to pay extra for that. Slows down your system a bit, but I have no prob with that. You can adjust that by the way on how it scans your system.

Greetings,

Gerard

[Lewis]

Take a look at the test results at

http://www.av-comparatives.org/ click on the Comparitive menu item then the Feb 2004 test results.

The RAV engine will go away because Microsoft bought the Romanian company.
KAV will be comming out with a version 5 which is outstanding. Anyone can download the beta release candidate and test the app. I have been running the application with no problems.