KIS 6: Does it have any drawbacks?

Kaspersky users in general seem to be a very satisfied lot and all the reviews from the mags seem to confirm that is an elite product.

My friends that prefer suites always ask me which ones to get. Presently I am telling them to get KIS or Norton.

Is KIS user friendly enough for a newbie? Does it have any drawbacks?

 

The firewall may be too "technical". Other than that it's a powerful suite.

 

Hello!

I started using KIS very recently. I am averege computer user. If you leave the settings as their are by default, you dont have many popups. I have also left antihacker (firewall) on training mode.It gives enough popups to know whats going on but it doesnt get irritating.you also are well secured When it comes to using PDM and especially application integrity control thats diffucult for a newbie. It gives you lot of popus. So if you dont have the knowlwdge to answer them correctly you can be overwhelmed by them. Well thats my opion anyway. I am pretty sure there are more knowlenable users here who can give you a better answer than me.

Kristian

 

The better you understand the suite, and the greater knowledge/experience you have, the better protected you will be while using it.

If the user genuinely is a 'newbie' I would think they would be better advised to consider using Zone Alarm Security Suite; this will give them the advantage of the KAV engine together with a FW and Operating System FW that are easier to use than the KIS equivalents.

 

...and heavier too.

kis should be fine, install it in basic mode first, this should provide a small number of pdm popups. then you can try enabling things (such as set the firewall to training mode, registry guard...) to find out how you can handle them.

also a search on their forum for the verdict the Proactive defense module gives should list a lot of matches for you to figure out if you should allow/deny/add to trusted zone etc.

 

Some users have a problem with checkdisk after installing Kis6, either with a time lag for stage two, or in my case unable to run checkdisk from within Windows.
Search the Kaspersky forum site for checkdisk and see the ongoing problem.

John

 

I just started using KIS 7 beta. It's pretty darn simple to use. I've got the firewall set to Training Mode, and got a few pop ups at first. It eventually settles down. The pop up warnings are fairly easy to figure out. KIS 7 is also very light.

 

One of the issues with KIS 6 was slower Web browsing speed, which was directly proportional to bandwidth; EUR and Asia users with 25+Mb connections were getting hit the hardest. Changing the Web browsing module to streaming scan instead of the default "buffer" scanning solved the problem in most cases, and I noticed an increase in browsing speed on the PC I have Kaspersky installed as well, when I boot into Windows. I can't remember the German site/forum that I got the info from (sorry), but Kaspersky's forum is an excellent resource:
http://forum.kaspersky.com/

 

KIS 6: Does it have any drawbacks?

yes, it can have drawbacks 'for some people' ....

the proactive defense can be too annoying for 'some people'
the firewall can too annoying for 'some people'
browsing can be slowed down for 'some people'
email scanning can be extremely slow for 'some people'
sometimes it doesnt agree with ones machine for 'some people'

if you have no issues, use it for sure.

 

emails scanning isnt slow for me.
i solved the slow browsing issue by changing the web av to high mode.
lodore

 

Why not down load a trial and give it a go? I agree with most of the above posts. Use Basic mode when installing, change Anti Hacker (Firewall in Kaspersky speak) to Training mode, enable the Registry Guard in the Proactive Defense Module but DO NOT enable the Application Integrity Control module.

Also, it is light on resources.

 

The anti-phishing is total crap, too many false negatives. The antispam is total crap too, too many false positives. Proactive defense if OFF by default, is way too noisy and not meant for the average user, so unless you know what you are doing and plan to use that feature, dont waste your money. I still with KAV

 

Proactive defense is not Off by default, it's never off, the lowest possible setting is basic mode where it will detect generic form of malware, invader's, rootkits, dangerous system activities, susspicious driver installations, dangerous registry values, keyloggers, and susspicious VBA macros.

i have no problem with the anti-spam filter, you probably don't know but the anti-spam uses a modified bayesian filter, so you have to train it, you won't get 100% detection and no false positvies from 20 Mails

 

Agree completely with plantextract. I have never had a false positive with the antiphishing function, and once trained the antispam works well, so you have to put some work in up front but that is not difficult. I am not saying it is the best but it is better than some I have tried. As for Proactive Defense it is just about perfect if you do not enable the Application Integrity Control component but.

Bottom line is that anyone considering any new product should download a trial, if avaialble, and give it a try for themselves.

BTW, it would be helpful to all concerned who are looking for advice if posts are more substantive, ie, IMHO crap is not a description that helps anyone's comprehension in a positive sense.