Which AV is it that you do not like?

McAfee 2007 is just as bad as the 2006 version IMO. Take a look at MSCONFIG under the services & startup tab for all of the McAfee entires. It's a huge drain on resources, and that alone is one good reason not to recommend the program to anyone. I can think of about 5 more off the top of my head, but I'll refrain from listing them. If you want to stick with a household name that is considered to have "install and forget about it" qualities, please do the computer some justice and go with Norton AV/IS 2007. I'd rather run AVG free over McAfee home products any day, and coming from me that is a bold statement.

 

read my post in the norton and norton 360 honest opintion thread.
the 2006 version of mcaffee has tons of autostart points and 13 processes.
the 2007 version of macffee has 22 processes OMG.
so i withdraw my good word about macfee.
lodore

 

AV's I do not like.......

McAfee.....My ISP offers McAfee 2007 antivirus and firewall free to its customers. I tried it, but it affected the performance of my computer. I didn't like the Security Center, the GUI and the lack of configuration options.

Norton 2007.........After installing it, and doing a restart, It literally took 10 minutes from the time the Windows Welcome window appeared, to the time my desktop wallpaper and all icons appeared. I have 1 Gig of RAM, and 2.5 Ghz processor, so it can't be that.

 

MWAV Free is unbelievable great anti-malware on-demand scanner.

Dislike: Norton, McAfee - bloated, VBA32 - a lot of false positives

 

Every time I reinstall NIS2007 the first initial startup (after installing) stakes longer than the rest, not sure why.

 

I couldn't agree more!!! I have recently installed, tested, puked, and removed CA's antivirus & Internet Security Suite, plus V4 & V5 of ViRobot.

Of the two vendors, the CA products are much, much worse.

 

KAV Pro: can disable itself without warning (no protection/no warning). Had lots of incompatibilities on my system with my other software. Impossible slow downs with real time scanning on a source tree dev server. Support didn't take feedback seriously. I'd love to love this software. Detection and speed of updates is great, but I do not trust the application itself. Maybe I'll try again in a year or two.

AntiVirusKit 2006: Not configurable enough to be on-demand with still background scanning and little system memory impact. Regardless, I still use it (KAV + BD engines, very decent back up combo), but I update manually. I wish it was more configurable. I'm not sure I'll update my license to AVK 2007.

NOD32: Yes, I like it, but... more and more these days I scan a piece of software and NOD32 labels it clean. If I scan the same sw with other antivirus scanners or expose it to sandbox analysis, it often contains a multiple times packed file with a trojan dropper. NOD32 is still my main residential scanner, but I'm beginning to dislike it more and more for slipping so much stuff through. I feel I can't trust it the way I used to be able to trust before.

All in all, I'm really beginning to loose hope on antivirus and security software on Windows. Either they are way too complicated and multi-layered (causing slow downs and incompatibilities) or then they don't offer much protection.

As such, I'm becoming more and more paranoid surfer, but with 0-day multi-browser exploits and extremely hard to detect root kits becoming more common every day, I'm not sure it really pays off that well

 

well since kaspersky only had pro in there 5x versions then the 6x versions might not have that problem

 

I never liked McAfee Virus-scan.

Back when i was younger and my dad used to do the maintainance on my machine, he used to set up Virusscan for me and password the interface

The reason being that it was a major resource hog and I would always end up disabling it so i could play games on my machine. At least now I am older and wiser and i can use my licensed copy of NOD32!

Apart from that, there aren't any others that i really dislike.

 

Kasperksy, because of their blatant misleading marketing against competitors here in the US. I hope the law catches up with them.

 

Just curious, which marketing techniques are you talking about?

 

On my old and slow K7 500Mhz, 320mb,

Avira PE works nice, light, I don't like the update function.
KAV 6, only with default settings, and needed the trusted zone for my defrag program (raxco).

At the end, all programs are good, but NOD32 runs smoother on MY old K7.

 

I want to know what misleading marketing techniques you are talking about also. This is first time I've heard anyone say that Kaspersky uses misleading marketing techniques. I'm very curious to see where you got your information from.

 

Doesnt surprise me, just compare the economy of Germany to Russia. Stability comes from time. Avira is stable. Kaspersky still remains a force on the rise, take no prisoners, attitude. I do not need that on my PC. I feel Dr. Web is a hell of alot more genuine then Kaspersky.

 

But what dirty tactics have they used here in the US? I've never read anything about that in any of the security forums. I would think if Kaspersky used any kind of misleading or dirty tactics, here, you would definitely hear about it in the forums.

 

Calm down, lets allow Zombini to explain it.

 

Hi Firecat. I didn't mean to sound like I was upset, or that I was defending Kaspersky. I was just curious about Zombini's statement. I'll wait until Zombini responds. Hopefully he will have the explanation.

 

It is always better to show an evidence before saying something like that...

 

Generally the A/V products that have given me the most trouble also tend to be the "best sellers" here in America, at least: Symantec (Any); Huge resource hog that feels like it needs a duo core processor to run; McAfee; See above. TrendMicro PC-cillian. If Trend could keep the basic look and feel of their enterprise OfficeScan product for home users and the real time speed that would be perfect. Trend generally updates twice a day and occasionally over the weekends depending on the severity of the vector. All and all I've had very good results - even with targeted trojans (the malware only seen by one of two people) sent to us. Tech support has been showing some signs of burn-out, particularly in the Philippines. But nothing I'm worried about.

Alas, home users need so much in the way of GUI hand-holding that these systems become incredibly bloated and nearly unmanageable. Or in other words they, the software publishers themselves, simplify things to the point of becoming difficult to use and or being effective. The motto seems to be: So simple its difficult.

Technical folks generally hate AOL for the same reasons. In this case AOL has made a system so simple that techs can't understand it or at the very least so simple it slows everything down to a crawl. Your seeing much the same with A/V solutions. It really depends on what your comfortable with. Some of these companies push signatures out anywhere from one a week to once a hour. So you really have two different criteria and most of what I read comes down to two distinct preferences: Speed of Signatures and Speed of scanning/resources. I could throw more mud at the GUI end of things but that really depends on personal tastes and is wildly more qualitative than the others. I can learn to live with most (*cough*) GUI systems if I can get the job done effectively.

The real problem with the home market is finding the right balance of the three criteria: Signatures, Scanning and to a lesser extent the GUI. I didn't really see much about pricing, etc. but the two main issues that I listed above seem to have the majority. I guess we just have to throw tons more horsepower at the problem (CPU cycles) and worry about the signatures as a second influence.

- beads

 

I didn't like BitDefender, always BSOD's, even when I gave it a second chance.
Even the free version gave me a free BSOD.

 

Could you flesh this out a bit more? Your talking about economies and a take no prisoners attitude by Kaspersky and one company being more"genuine" seems like a disjointed rant.

 

Not such a problem here. Norton 2007 runs very nice and smooth when I trialled it, even on lower configurations than yours.

 

yeah, i dont understand that comment either sputnik, norton 2007 has always ran fast and swifty whenever ive trialed it.

 

Same here, will never look at them again. No need to. They came, i tried, i was given better results elsewhere without such a heavy load of gunk.

 

First boot after install would include a lot of files 'added' and system changes, so that would be expected.

Actually may take up to three boots, before boot time is back down to normal.

Haven't used Norton AV since NSW2005, but also check for settings on boot scan.