AntiViri PE? McAfee AV needs to go!

Hello Fellow Creatures,
I need some input from the Wilders Family on this. As is the case my research does not always start here but almost always ends here for final opinions.

My system is older and 256 ram 800 MHz Celeron plenty of HD space. I am running XP always up to date. I am behind a router Firewall and running BoClean and Out Post Pro Firewall.

My free Comcast McAfee AV will not update automatically properly. Manually only and always need to log into update site and it looks like it checks and downloads everything again. What a pain. Also got to go through the Security Center more resource hog for uneeded stuff. I think it does not agree with Out Post. I have tried several tweaks. Anyway the only thing different is the Out Post from the above machine and the family PC and the family PC updates regular just fine.

Anyway the AV needs to be light on RAM for sure. Noting the other protections listed above, I am thinking about going back to AntiVira. I see they have made some improvements since over a year ago.

AVAST seems a little to heavy for my machine. I have used AVG Free, O. K. but so many complain about it's detects and cleanings. BUT REMEMBER CONSIDER MY ABOVE SET UP, THE AV I NEED ONLY NEEDS TO DO... WELL AN AV JOB. BoClean and OutPost are capable of getting Trojans and other malwares.

One finally important point I note the May AV Comparatives I see 25 (higher) False Positives. Since I am a safe surfer and do not on line game and such could I not turn off heuristics option this would reduce the false positives by 20 it seems. Just keep the sigs up to date. I have had one virus in 6 years that was in 2001.

Opinions please? Thanks.

 

If it has to be free, why don't you inquire with the Inspector or others as to the stability of the latest Fprot beta? It should be light enough.

 

for free, id consider AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic.

for a paid AV id look to nod32 or F-Prot.

 

Your reply brings up a good point. My intention is when Vista comes out to buy an AV package for a custom built machine, but for this old machine with a limited life, I want a free AV. However, it does need to operate at all times. Have neither the time or patience for a beta bug at this point in my life. One day I do hope to be a beta tester.

This in my mind rules out beta AV's Thanks for the suggestion.

 

For paid AV indeed excellent choices. F-Prot wins on price.

 

AntiVir is good, but perhaps a little heavy on ram for your needs. I'm using it now on a 2k machine and it runs at about 29mb ram usage total. Avast would be my other choice, and if you only install the modules you need, it can run fairly light on ram, lighter than AntiVir for sure...

 

i think avast is heavier on cpu tho.

 

i think it should be eiether avira nod32 or dr web since they are all light. but if you like good inter faces you cant beat avira

 

Hi,folks. If I remember correctly,McAfee AV updater uses Active X format, the mannual update is extremely painful and awfully lengthy. Another issue is that this app does not like to share a room with outpost fierewall, the update passage is often blocked, you can scream and yell, but to no avail. I have an older pc (win 2000) with 256 ram. I packed it with avast/out post and O&O Clever Cache v.6.0(which is a magical ram optimizer and plus), and it runs like a reenergized youth. Try it.

 

Don't always let other people's perceptions dictate what AV you will specifically use. There are many factors that should go into choosing one, like how "aggressive" you are in web surfing, e-mailing, detection rates, look and feel, stability, and yes price, just to name a few.

I use AVG myself and can honestly say this is one of the only TWO AV's I've ever used (both free and paid) that never gave me a problem in terms of stability and coding. It runs light and flawlessly on my system. As far as detections go, although I will be the first to say that I am NOT an expert in the field, it has yet to miss anything that has come its way.

Looking ONLY at detection rates with a given AV is like looking at only one color in a prism...yet it takes several colors to make a rainbow.

Best Regards...

 

mercurie,

Have you considered limited account + BOClean + Outpost and call it a day on realtime, and back that up with a periodic online scan? I realize that it's arguably a little on the lean side. Alternatively, run from a virtual environment (e.g. ShadowSurfer, I do not know if the free offer is still active, but there are alternate options available) with BOClean & OP active if you are worried about file infection.

Blue

 

Yes, you have certainly identified the problems and the sources of them accurately in my opinion! I forgot to go into the Active X stuff. Thanks.

 

Running the other apps. from a limited account...hmmm that might work safely enough considering my habits and careful nature. Thanks, I will take a look at ShadowSurfer.

 

I run AntiVir Classic with Prevx on a 450Mhz with 256Mb Ram behind a router. I do not have problems with resources but thismay be different on your machine. Give AntiVir a go and see what you think.

 

i'd buy NOD32 and put off Visra for 12 months. Who wants it when it's first released and buggy. You can always move NOD32 to the new machine. If it must be free try Antivir.

Fairy

 

I'd go with AVG Free with your existing firewall and stuff. Very light realtime monitor.

It's a decent program unless you have risky surfing habits..

 

mercurie----

If you feel comfortable with avg, just keep it. With boclean and outpost, you already have a decent protection.

shek

 

You should add Ad aware and spyware blaster to your security package. They dont use too much resources and they are free:

 

Make sure the free program scans email.
I'm not sure which free programs scan email.

Also, often, one can find free, or low cost, AFTER rebate NAV.

 

I use Comcast Email is this not called Web Mail ? Is this not already scanned by Comcast . Would not AV catch this upon opening certainly BoClean and Out Post also offers much security in this area as well.

If no then AVG would be the better choice.

 

Has Comcast stated that they are running AV software to screen your email?
I doubt that very much. And, I would run quickly away from Comcast , or any ISP, if they did such screening.

 

Howard, My Isp runs av and spam scanning of all four of my pop3 mail accounts through them and they do an excellent job.

bigc

 

How do you know?

Do they report ALL flagged messages?

I won't trust anyone to make such decisions for me,
I want to choose my own poison, not have others choose it for me.

 

They will report and let me read all emails flagged infected and the same with spam on their server so there is no way for me to get infected. They leave the final decision to allow the flagged spam to go to my inbox or delete it on their server up to me. The infected emails can be read on their server but I can not elect to have them delivered to my inbox. Like I stated they do an excellent job. and have been doing so for at least the last three years since I have been useing their services.


Sorry about heading off topic, I quit.

 

You are relying on them to flag things.
What about the ones they miss, or incorrectly flag.
It is better to have control of the software used.

Ditto for spam.

My ISP provides a filtering mechanism based on SIEVE (http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/#implementations).

I create my own filters at the mail server using Sieve, and then again on my PC using Thunderbird.

It is way too time consuming to manually inspect flagged spam. Sure, a few valid messages may get killed, but that's a low cost compared with manually picking the good ones.

I'd never allow an ISP to filter anything.