NOD32 or Norton

also with suites you dont have to worry if all the best separate apps you use work together with no conflicts.
as CSJ said there is enough suites out there you must like one of them.
lodore

 

As Willington said, suites ARE good as long as everything works OK, and I agree. But as I experienced with ZA, all it takes is a buggy upgrade and you're dead in the water. I think you may have something when you said "getting into the Money Spinner". They don't want to risk losing customers so they offer an all in one.

 

there are too many good suites out there with no upgrade / update problems in the last so-many years,

you should be fine with this issue, unless you are a user of antivir as their updates seem to be 'hit or miss' for whether it messes up something in the program (although please note, this doesnt affect security)

 

twl845,

I had the same experience with ZA Pro as you. I tried their suite only to find the system bog down, crashes with updates, the internet came to a halt because everthing was being checked for spyware, then a virus, then for phishing... etc. The suites are the soup-du-jour and I really want no part of them. I use a stand alone av, comodo firewall, and three spyware programs as well .


CSJ,

I respect your oppinion, but I strongly dissagree with the idea that suite's provide a more secure option than a selection of stand alone software. There is no company out there that provides the best of all worlds, not to mention that you're dead in the water when the single suite is shut down. Again, jack of all trades, but master of none.

Stand alone software allows you to select from the BEST security software out there, allowing you to taylor your computer to your security needs. While I agree that you can turn some of the options off, I am not a fan of buying a suite only to have half the options eating up space because I either don't need them, they aren't as efficient as other software, or cause a conflict with my system.

Neil

 

i dissagree, suites .... ok lets take f-secure as an example here,

if the firewall misses it > deepguard will pick up on it and if not that, then one of the engines will.

suites are packed together in 'layered way' so if one componant isnt able to take care of a certain threat, there should be something in the suite that will, like a 2nd or 3rd defence.

i agree that if the suite goes down, security is gone (but in some cases, not completly, only the real-time), which is why i have a router with its built in firewall just for safety measures, but dont forget that single apps can be disabled too with malware, especially zero day not picked up by heuristic detection, no av or suite is perfect, but on the overall look (including price and system performance), suites are the way to go, especially this year with sooo many good advancements and sooo many good ones on the market right now.

im not having any 'dont use single apps' discussions, as i am a user at current of just an AV > dr.web, but this is just for my laptop with my firewall being the one of the router.

for my 2 pcs, i use 2 suites on them and wouldnt think of anything else for them, too many choices of good suites now, offering great protecton and with low resources (especially the 2007 ranges of suites).

anyway, thats my 2 cents hehe

----------
btw: this flight sim X sucks, its too darn hard. aghhh *Crash*

 

I understand how the suite's work, more or less the same as a layered defense, however, the problem of the suite still lies in the fact that they are jack of all trades. As I mentioned previously, suite's are great for users who wouldn't normally use ANYthing, but they are not the best option because there are many stand alone programs out there that provide better protection in a given area than certain aspects of the suite. Why compromise with less security in one area for the use of a suite that provides better security in a limited area? Why not get the best of every world and taylor the apps to your needs?

I agree that stand alone programs can be shut down. The difference being is that the suite only requires one program to be shut down. The collection of security programs requires that hackers shut down the AV, the firewall, the anti-spyware and so on separately. If one goes down, it doesn't take the rest with it.

I guess the last thing about the stand alone programs is that many of them are free for personal use

Neil

 

you talking about firewalls here?

if so, all firewalls in suites will keep you clear of hackers etc which is basically all they are there for, this is the main objective, however, if your talking about leaktests, or if you even care of those 'so-called tests, then make your choice on that. (ie outpost)

if your talking of spyware/adware, i still think the spyware/adware detection in suites is good enough for sure.

 

I'm talking about suites such as NIS, KIS and so on. Spyware/adware detection is pretty good on all of the programs out there, including the above mentioned suites, but like AV's, spyware/adware programs, some detect things that others miss and so on.

 

no software is perfect, you need to realise this.

 

My history with using Norton Antivirus and converting most of the systems I manage has been about the same as 5150's description. After using the NOD32 trial version for one month this past year I was so impressed with its performance that a few months later I purchased eight two year subscriptions of NOD32 and one retail boxed CD for a total of nine subscriptions. I thoroughly un-installed NAV 2002 and 2003 from every machine that it was installed on and replaced it with NOD32. During the time I had NAV installed on all those systems I experienced all the well documented problems with NAV such as the bloated newer versions, the un-install difficulties, the buggy updates, the incompatibilities, increased cost, and the yearly push by them to force you into the next annual version. The real kicker for me was this past year 2006 when I lost complete faith in Symantec as a security company when they completely dropped support for NAV 2003 and earlier NAV versions and with four months left on most of the NAV 2003 subscriptions the definition updates went from several times a week to once a week to not working at all. This was the last straw for Symantec and it's once heralded NAV program. After this last negative experience the idea of upgrading to any new and improved NAV version was not important to me if this policy was the way that Symantec was going to treat its long time valued and loyal software customers.

Fortunately I had been researching other solutions for AV for the previous two years before that and I had narrowed my choices down to KAV and NOD32 with my final decision being NOD32. Since then I have never looked back and everything that disappointed me about my AV software experience with NAV has been the opposite with NOD32. Replacing NAV with NOD32 was like buying new computers or upgrading their RAM and CPU's. I have had practically zero problems with compatibility on any of the systems, version upgrades have been simple and flawless and take no more than two minutes or less to complete. On two of the eight computers that I installed subscriptions of NOD32 on I had previously run NAV 2003, TrendMicro Housecall online scan, McAfee stinger, Kaspersky online web scan, and all the most popular free antispyware programs. However, only NOD32 with its advanced heuristics found a five year old virus that was part of an archived folder from an older drive when upgrading from older Win98SE systems to a newer system using Windows XP. The virus was found in an old Eudora program's downloaded email attachment file folder from an adult spam email that had been downloaded when the previous systems were still using 56K dialup. The file had never been opened since it was obvious adult spam but for whatever reason it never was deleted either. Years of AV and AS scanners missed it but NOD32 found it and quarantined it as a virus.

It didn't take long for me to realize that NOD32 was a different kind of AV program and it has not only become one of my favorite AV programs but it is one of the my favorite Windows programs since it does exactly what it is supposed to do and it does it better than most other AV's and without negatively effecting my computer's performance the way many other advanced security programs do. Another welcome positive about NOD32 is the awesome support available in the NOD32 v2 forum here at Wilder's by the many Moderators and other contributors. For these and numerous other reasons I highly recommend NOD32 as the current stand alone anti-virus program of choice. Just for reference the only other stand alone AV programs besides NOD32 that I would recommend at this time would be KAV or a KAV engine based AV for a subscription AV product and Avira (or AntiVir) for a free AV program.

 

Now if you dump that ZA for Comodo, you'll really see an improvement in your computers performance! I know.