Summer vacation - AV purchase - BitDefender or NOD32?

Hello everyone

Its gonna be summertime soon for us and holidays are about to start after these darn exams are over....and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna pursue an AV in that period. So I have narrowed down my choices to BitDefender Professional and NOD32.

Both are available very cheaply for me - and no its not bootleg.

Now I do know both of these are excellent AV's, and while NOD gets better at database, BD will soon introduce new heuristics. Do any of these have a memory scanner?

And the most important factor for me is this - I continually keep searching the web for cracks so that I can forward the same to the program developer so they can immunize their program against it. Therefore I am continually infected with various types of Trojans and Adware.

Now, I would really prefer it if any AV does offer detection *and removal* of the same. I mean, the registry entries made by the malware, BHOs, etc.

So which one would be better? BD's website's virus descriptions say that I should manually delete registry entries of malware, but NOD's website does not say that I need to manually delete the registry entries and startup objects, etc.

And do you recommend I try out the NOD 2.5 beta?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Firecat

 

Hi Firecat, definitely give the Nod32 Beta a whirl, it is very stable, and rather impressive, beside which, now is the perfect time to test it, as it is FREE until it goes to final release.

Hope this helps...

Cheers

 

Hello Blackspear,

I will try it out - just let the darn exams end!

Can you answer this question for me - Will NOD32 remove the registry entries, BHOs and other crap made by the malware on my system?

Regards,
Firecat

 

Either one would offer you good protection but I thought you were happy with ArcaVir?

With these high-risk sites, IMO, you also need a running AT Guard as backup to your AV scanner. Further, most of the good commercial AT scanners will give you a better cleaning of trojans from your system than most AV's. And some of the Anti-Trojans have a genuine memory scanner.

Your choice, but IMO, it is at least as stable as the latest official version.

 

I am happy with ArcaVir - but I am more happy with an AV that is locally available - KAV came and went from my country - and now its pretty much the big four, BitDefender and NOD.

I did try A-Squared AT trial but I found that I didnt need it with eScan around. But now, its not eScan, its BD or NOD...so I may need it. But I also got McAfee (my brother) to protect me against trojans

 

You may need even more tham McAfee at these crack sites

Keep to ArcaVir and supplement it with a good AT to run in real time.

 

Hi Firecat,

I would ask you to go with Bitdefender Standard. I would really like to see a honest review of it by someone knowledgeable. I see bits a pieces of info on BD, but I have not seen a full thread discussing the attributes and faults of BD, at least not one that is current.

Regards,
Mike

 

If I buy BD, its gonna be the Pro version. ArcaVir aint really too good at signature detection of script virii form Firefighter's tests - I'm scared/

I will review the entire Anti-Virus part of BitDefender Pro version (if I buy it) so you can have a good review of BD Standard.

 

If I were you I'd really only consider (at the very least) professional tests in helping me decide what AV to buy. Even then I'd use my own judgement and trials to really decide. This is just my personal opinion, but something you might want to consider.

 

Thats the problem - VirusP's the only test I know of which has put ArcaVir into a real comparative.

AV-comparatives put ArcaVir into a separated test, but no real results were put up, just 'standard' or 'advanced+'

 

I like BitDefender more then NOD32, but again it's personal... I'm testing BitDefender right now and will make a review in the next weeks...

 

i think the std version is better as i dont like the firewall included with the pro version..u can turn it off i think,but i found out that ram usage is low in std version compared to the pro version..there are more processes with the pro version i think..

 

If you disable the anti-spam and firewall in the pro the RAM usage is equal to the Standart version, just tried it out with the latest versions...

 

hi style, thanks for correcting me..but are u sure there exists the same no of processes once you disable the antispam and the firewall in the pro version??coz when i tested sometime back it was different....

 

Is BitDefender's firewall at least as good as the Windows Firewall?

 

@clansman77 - I see your sig 'satyameva jayathe' - Are you Indian?

 

Nod32...

Its different at first, but after a few days it is like a new religion.

 

Yes, I cannot wait for the 'I Love AMON' badges

More seriously, or rather even more seriously , I find it refreshing to use software not designed on the assumption I am an idiot.

 

There was only one magazine which reviewed NOD in my country, and it seems they're biased towards NAV, McAfee, Trend.

Panda - They said "Interface should not be that simplified"
NOD32 - They said that the interface was way too complex.

You can imagine how angry I was reading that. I was VERY angry indeed. I personally like NOD's interface well enough, and I *love* it when there are multiple options to choose from.

I cant help it - I get along better with complexity

 

How much depth of configurability does BD offer?

 

Thanks a million StyleWarz.

 

Right now I'm still undecided. I saw a thread in which NOD32 had a problem with some games.....and I play games a lot. So BD would be the better option there. But I feel I'd do better for Eset.

Besides, NOD32 has a memory scanner, and I'm not sure whether BD scans memory. And NOD does remove registry entries of malware, which BD does not do for many malware (but not all, I'm not sure).

Apart from Half-Life 2, does any other game have any reported bugs/errors with NOD32 running?

Right now, I give the edge to NOD, but I have not dropped BD yet. I can get BitDefender's two year license for slightly more than NOD's one year license.

This is a very tough decision indeed.

 

Not that my tech's have found, and they are hard core gamers

I would still suggest downloading the Beta of Nod32 and giving it a whirl while it remains FREE.

Hope this helps...

Cheers

 

OK, Now I need to ask a few more questions:

1)How good are both AV's in handling runtime packers? I heard BD has a very good unpacker, but I do not know about NOD....

2)Does NOD32 2.5 have a new interface - Although I can live with the current interface, I'd like a better one for the On-Demand Scanner

I really dont care about the interface much - I'm very adaptive to those things

Right now I still give the edge to NOD32....

 

Uhh.....Darn it. Here's an update:

BitDefender's support has really helped me a lot, Jotti's malware scan shows BD having great results. BD's HIVE will be almost as good as NOD32's heuristics (mostly). I see both products are gonna be pretty much the same in signature as well as heuristic detection in the future.

Right now, I'm not giving any AV the nod. NOD gives me better heuristics, but BD does quite well in the signatures department. Someone help me

Of course, one cant beat the price I get for BD....