Which are the top-tier AV programs ?

I am not going to ask which is the best. But I am asking which ones are generally considered the top tier of AV softwares for home or small office for the Windows platform. (XP pro SP2).

I am new to antivirus and security concerns. I have been safe without taking precautions until lately.

Now I am wising up. I installed the trial version of NOD32 yesterday. It seems pretty good. It found trojans on my laptop.

My forum reading suggests that
KAV is well respected but may be bloaty & a resource hog that has a few false positives.

NOD32 is well respected, lighter and faster.

Bit Defender seems to have fans.

Consumer Reports liked Trend. I do not know if that is worth much weight.

-Is it safe to say that these are the top drawer?

Thanks,
B.

 

Kav.mcafee, nod and trend from wat I get from this forum. If you goto other forums they will drop mcafee and say norton. Other forums will drop kav and say nod. Trends ratings are pretty much the same and constant in every forum I have seen. Its almost like asking what is the best av imo. Allot of people like to visit sites like http://www.av-comparatives.org/ http://www.virus.gr http://www.virusbtn.com/ to determine which is the best or which ones comes in the top 4. I think Kav.mcafee, nod and trend actually comes close to the best 4 imo.

 

NOD32, KAV, McAfee Enterprise (Not the home version), VBA32, BitDefender. Not in any order though! LOL!

 

Avast, BitDefender, Dr Web, Command, F-Prot, KAV, other KAV-engined AV's, McAfee, Norton, Panda, Sophos and Trend would all be considered as excellent AV's.

Don't believe everything you read .

Much better to trial and test an AV on your computer and then make a judgement.

 

For me:

1º NOD32
2º McAfee VS Enterprise
3º KAV
4º Symantec Co.
5º Bitdefender

 

1. NOD32
2. KAV

Feeware:
1. avast! Home Edition
2. AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic

 

From my experiences "in the field" as it were, the very best AVs in terms of breadth of cover are NOD32 and KAV.

The AV with the smallest resource footprint yet still retaining excellent coverage is F-Prot.

That said, it's a pretty level playing field at the moment, with many of those AVs already mentioned by others being worthwhile.

The only "top-tier" AV programs I have doubts about, having seen many infected PCs despite being protected by those apps, are Norton Antivirus and McAfee Antivirus. Both are very resource-hungry and both have frequently left PCs that I have dealt with vulnerable to attack for various reasons which I won't go into detail here.

 

Let's be honest: McAfee and Norton are both very good AVs. But because the overwhelming "tendency" for the vast majority of users in these forums is to:

A) support "the little guy" while "bashing" the big guy, and
2) want to feel as though they are part of a special type of "cult" of sorts that differs from "the majority"....

You aren't going to see many favorable reviews towards McAfee and Norton from the individual members who post in these forums. Not ot mention, NOD has a strong following here due to their forums being located here, and the "big boys" are a threat to their base and marketshare.

Now....having said that....KAV and NOD are both top notch products (arguably the two best). But just as is fashionable to bash Microsoft because of marketshare and it's position relative to the marketplace, so is bashing Norton, McAfee and other top products that have a large worldwide, established base and marketshare.

Also, as for people seeing "more infected machines that were protected by McAfee and Norton than machines protected by NOD and KAV"....considering the marketshare of these products compared to one another, that only makes sense! If more households are using Norton and McAfee while only a few are using KAV and NOD, of course there are going to be more infected machines that are protected by Norton and McAfee. The only way to get a TRUE sample is on a "per capita" basis, and that is likely something that would be extremely hard to determine (because of the availability of user's to "change" their AV, and not knowing all of the detailed statistics of users who DO NOT have any problems, or have them but don't report them...as well as the individual surfer's habits)....

 

av-comparitives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/)

gives:

Kaspersky an Advanced+ rating for both On-demand and Retrospective testing.

Those that get at least Advanced+ and Advanced in both are:

BitDefender
McAfee
NOD32

I would consider these the top-tier at this time. Pretty much reflects my own experiences.

Rich

 

A few that I would not regret recommending:
KAV, McAfee VSE 7 or 8, NOD32, BitDefender, VBA32, Dr.Web.

 

Well said JR,

Plus I have noticed many times that people don't always understand the AVs they are criticizing. Forex, only version 10.0 or higher of NAV's engine {home edition} will detect expanded threats even if they are in the database; people ofen draw conclusions based on an outdated engine; even VirusTotal is still using version 8.0 which, even it that was the Corporate edition {which has a different version numbering system}, it would still be obsoleted since only engine 9.0 and higher of the Corporate will detect the expanded threats' section of Symantec's database. I'm sure such considerations come into play for McAfee and other AVs, but am just discussing the one product {NAV, SAV} that I am most familiar with.

Also, people often confuse spyware with other 'classic' malware; I really don't expect my AV to have high detection rate for spyware {which is part of the "expanded threat" signatures}; that's why I use a dedicated A.S. app; and even if such is detected by an AV, that doesn't mean an AV can "clean" it, as spyware is much harder to clean than the 'classic' malware {virus, trojan, worm in the traditional sense}.

Last, there are just plain misconfigured boxes, and situations where somehow malware became resident in memory and "killed" the AV, after which all sorts of extra "baddies" were let in since the shields {AV defenses} were down; etc. In fact, with a compromised box that is the very first thing I would do, launch the EICAR test virus and see if it is flagged -- if not, then the local AV is "dead", so no wonder if a bunch of other stuff {baddies} has gotten let in; etc. Many things like that *ought* to be intelligently taken into consideration before someone jumps to conclusions and comes onto an internet forum to post that such-and-such scanner "sucks" {be it NAV, Trend-Micro, take your pick, whatever the bashing victim, i.e. scanner that "missed" stuff, happens to be}.

Honestly I really think, and I don't mean to sound mean-spirited, but I think that folks need to examine themselves and their motives before they publicly attack products; ask themselves have they been thoughtful, fair, and intelligent in evaluating a situation; did they even try EICAR to see if the AV was even functional; did they verify the AV was installed and configured properly; did they take into consideration the security and surfing habits of the client who got himself infected {was his PC fully patched, or was he someone with unpatched system who uses IE and clicks on everything in sight}.

Honestly I think, and again I mean nothing mean-spirited, that sometimes some folks are just looking for opportunities to criticize a particular Vendor or Brand that they dislike; they are looking for anything, any bit of evidence, however skewed and unscientific the evidence might be, to bash a product they dislike. I hope the day never comes that I am seen publicly bashing a product that: (1) I do not understand {versions, engines, product issues, etc.}; (2) I have not fairly assessed ALL the facts and circumstances.

That said, I will just flat-out state that I have tested NAV on over a Gigabyte of samples and know that it has good detection rate, and if people aren't honest enough to provide believable evidence {samples would be nice}, then I am skeptical of motives, especially if someone uses visceral rhetoric and doesn't provide sufficient facts to convince me in a professional and objective manner. NAV is *not* porous as a sieve, the way some of these ridiculous posts try to paint this scanner.

I realize that NAV misses things, indeed ALL scanners do, even KAV does not detect everything, believe it or not I come across occasional sample or two that NAV detects first before KAV is detecting. KAV is an excellent scanner, don't misunderstand, but this touting of KAV as if it is a bulletproof scanner that has no room for improvement is as bad as if I came on here and told you that NAV never missed anything which of course would be totally bogus and wrong.

I know it is hard, but I admonish all, everyone, to try to swallow prejudice and be fair, even to products-vendors that are not your first choice or preference. Obviously *someone* finds utility in these products or they wouldn't purchase them. JMHO

Take Care,
Warmly, Ran

 

Hey! buddy what about you all go to http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
And i think Bitdefender is very very better ever in my life after i try so many type of AV program. First time my file infected by Win32.Pinfi which is Win32.Parite.A or B, then i use Norton AV, virus definition already updated, then i disinfected that file, then the file become corrupted (Damn the file really important to me). After i go to that site then i know Bitdefender get GOLD, then i try to download it and try it, its good, can disinfect my file and the file can be use again. So, some AV will disinfect the virus in some mistake. So, in my opinion, i think Bitdefender is best . My second choice is Kaspersky, also best, but sadly that site didn't test the Kaspersky AV.

 

The site http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ is flawed. Do not rely on that rankings.
Read some reasons here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12175.msg102828#msg102828

 

I've been using NOD 32 for awhile, I would advice in buying it, and NOT cough...... using it for free!!!!!

 

Kaspersky, BitDefender and NOD32 are all star programs, in my opinion. (Detection-wise)

F-Prot is a high-quality product, with lots of thought put into the coding.

 

KAV, NOD32, McAffe Enterprise, Bitdefender

Each of the above has received at least one advanced+ rating from AV comparatives in recent tests. Recent versions of Symantec AV are also in that category, but use too much memory and cause system slowdowns. The commercial version of McAfee has detection that is first rate, but the security center interface is obnoxious. If it does not bother you, it is another choice. NOD32 has a geekish interface. If you like to tinker with your AV, its for you. KAV and Bitdefender have easier to comprehend interfaces.

 

for me Kaspersky is the best...
You can use similars: F-Secure, eScan, etc...
I think Kaspersky database and analysts are better than other...

 

Dude you belive that crop that's just users review. if you really want to see comparisons go to http://www.av-comparatives.org/

KAV Rules

 

Guys how about one with out a subscription fee? Which will rate best then?

thank you!
Avail

 

Kaspersky,NOD32,Panda,BitDefender,DrWeb and McAfee Enterprise 8 (home versions suck at least for me). You can't miss if you use any of these.

 

My vote is for either NOD32 or Kapersky. Try a trial of each and see which you prefer.

As a VAR, based on many many experiences in many environments, I stopped reselling Symantec Corporate Edition over a year ago, and starting running far far away from McAfee products a long time ago. Not because of the implied trends in "bashing the big guys"...but because of experiences with them in real world production environments of my clients.

 

There all have sub fees attached to it. I wonder, why do subfees need to be attached to these things

Thank you!
Avail

 

Sub fee? Whats that?

 

Subscription fees. These are necessary in order for the AV makers to be able to afford to continue updating the AV. Without subscription fees, they would run out of money to pay their employees to keep working

 

I use Bit Defender 9.0. I do not think it is better than some others, but it is a top notch AV.
I agree with JR. I used Norton for 5 years, and it never let any malware on my machine. I do not know much about the resources it uses, but my machine never seemed to suffer. I guess I left it because I read so much about its use of resources.

There is no denying that it and McAfee are as good as any AV.

Jerry