Can anyone give me the NOD on NOD32

Hi All
Most people in these forums have a very high opinions of NOD32 so can anyone explain why in all of the various reviews I have read on antivirus software it does not come in the top ten. I come from England and until I started reading these forums I had never heard of it. At present I am using Trend Micro which until now has been ok, although I would not know a good one from a bad one as I like most other people rely on what others tell us.

Tex

 

Hi Ronjor
I agree with you on relying on user opinion but the reviews I was referring to are not from advertisers but from supposedly technical people in computer magazines.
Tex

 

Maybe you should read this

http://www.nod32-av.com/snakeoil/snakeoil.htm

No, its not an Eset page, but rather an Eset Partner's. An interesting read, still.

 

tex i think if you are happy with trend its better to stick with it,although me and many others in this forum dont think trends detection is too good.if you practice safe hex then trend alone is sufficient.if you are at the other extreme then think of additional protection/change of an av..in that case its better to experiment with a selected group of avs and choose what suits u and ur system best.nod32 is an excellent av with the best heuristics ,low resource usage ,and good detection and is recommended here and in other forums as well..

i doubt the credibility of such tests.i dont think they care to test out all those softwares,although reviews can vary..its better to go by user opinions from knowledgable people and virus scaner tests..
and btw there are other very good avs too (my opinion) like kaspersky(my favourite),bitdefender(what i use),mcafee etc,which i believe has better detection than nod...

 

I am quite happy with trend but if there is a better AV in the market I would like the best. NOD does get good points as the links in the other messages shows but unfortunately it is one of those subjects that has so many different opinions, but by the vibes I am getting from this forum I am very tempted to try it out.
My regards to all who corresponded
Tex

 

I do not want to bash here trend micro, so this posting is based ON FACTS.
Trend Micro is FAR AWAY from having a up-2-date working scan engine.

Facts:

Very bad with polymorphic and methamorphic Viruses ---> for viruses with EOP (Entry Point Obscuring) you need special detection plugins. Such Plugins are more advanced than just plain simple Signature Scanning.

Trend has a very limited unpack/emulating engine. This means it is difficult/impossible for Trend to detect repacked (already existing) malware.

No working heuristics at all - trend has more than 100 people in the virus lab just for adding signatures until the devil escapes hell - also adding signature for every single polymorphic virus which was found in some testset (this procedure is without any sense, because it would NOT detect any real virus infection!) Best example are all those .#{number} virus signatures.

Of course no home user ( and amateurish hobby av testers ) would find out this fact, because they just use samples without replicating them!

Now build up your own mind...

 

I, too, am from the UK and can confirm that NOD is a newcomer to the magazines e.g. PC Pro. They tend to go for the safe choice, and there's safety in numbers.

However, I've been a NOD user (read fanatic) for about five years and it's never let me down. I found it by chance and would not use anything else that's currently on the market. If KAV made tea and toast I might switch but it would be a difficult decision

As an assembler programmer back in the 60's I can well understand why Eset chose to use this for the important bits and it was the main reason I was attracted to NOD in the first place.

 

HA!!! You are most sympatic! Very difficult to find such people!

I did start with ZX81 Assembly programming, later C16/Plus 4 (i wrote there a compiler) then C64 and IBM PET and after this AMIGA demo szene (Bitblitter, vectorballs, scroller and antivirus) Then PC10 - the first 10 Megabyte HDD x86

 

My assembler programming was on mainframes, Eliot 803, ICL, IBM and Burroughs.

 

Are you kidding me ?

I had a C64 and a Amiga 1200 a long time ago.
Nowadays, I play those games using an emulator.I still missed it.

Best Regards,

DonKid.

 

and the UK market has one main distributor who is working to signup resellers... I don't know how many there are total, but I don't think it's that many. For what it's worth, I'm a Brit living in the USA now... so I have a little bit of perspective from both sides of the pond.

If it's any consolation, I think the same is true here in the US - I'd never heard of NOD32 until Windows SP2, when our fully up-to-date Norton wasn't being recognised by XP - we found out that practically the ONLY AV solution recognised was NOD32 - who? We all chorused....

So I called my Brother back in Wiltshire and asked if he'd heard of NOD32 - NOD who??

So, it's not just you - this is just a relatively unknown product, with a merry band of ever growing enthusiastic owners! Come join us!!!

regards

Greg

 

Wow HB ... that sounds remarkably like my computer path - 'cept I started with spectrum (didn't want to build a ZX-81 - I've never been that handy with a soldering iron, and I think they only came in kits when they first came out right?), then Pets at school, vic-20s, C-64 tape & floppy, Amiga 500 floppy then HDs - I miss fighting the blitterchip! After that I went Mac... for personal use and Xenix/Unix/AIX for work...

 

http://www.av-comparatives.org
-> Comparatives
-> 4. Retrospective/ProActive Test November 2004
-> Online results

 

That should pretty much build up everones minds

But I must say that Trend Micro does have heuristics. It only targets specific file types I think. The only malware it ever caught via heuristics was a StartPage Trojan variant.

I did put some 2-3 malware to NOD32 and I disabled signatures, and I was pleasantly surprised to see none of my samples were missed.

Now Trend has signatures for that StartPage variant, and therefore I cant test it anymore.

 

I found NOD32 on the cover CD-ROM of a PC magazine I got from the local library. I downloaded it and thought that it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. At that time I had AVG on my PC. They'd just gone to v7 and while v6 had worked perfectly this latest version was giving me some headaches.

After installation I ran the scanner and gotcsomewhat of a shock. NOD32 picked up nasties that both AVG and my spyware program had missed and I'd been very confident about both. So I kept on with the freebie of NOD32 and it ran without asking me to pay for over 7 months.

I then got a new PC and my old version of NOD wouldn't work so I downloaded the trial version from Eset's site. All I can say is that I am now a registered paid up user of NOD32 - the first AV I've ever paid for. To quote another poster, I do practise 'safe hex' but having NOD32 in the background makes me feel very secure. Anything that gets past my usual computer routines NOD is going to pick up. Using Blackspear's settings helps. If you never buy another piece of software you must get NOD32.

 

NOD32 Gets The Nod

 

I was a longtime nortons user,what a pig,don't know why I put up with it.Then I tried Kaspersky,great detection rate but alternative data streams were causing a coupla probs and it would still do a startup scan when this function was disabled.

Last couple of months have been using Vet av and found it very good but I got bored so gave nod 2.5 beta a run.Uses slightly more resources than vet but geez,the speed at a full sysdtem scan is half that of vet with many more files checked,so I intend to stick with it.

One thing I miss about Kaspersky is the alien squeal it gives out if detecting anything malicious. Hint,hint nod people!