F-prot, is it forreal?

I wanted to know how come an av so light and so fast can get 97% on the latest test? I'm far from an av expert but I figured that AV's that used more memory were a bit better due to stronger virus scanning/internals.

And how can F-prot score higher than NOD32? Not to mention F-prot is sold for little than nothing?

When I used it in the past I thought I didn't have an Av Installed becuase it was so quick.

Need some feedback becuase I'm on dial up and I need to keep my pc somewhat fast and I'm convinced in getting look n stop, should I get this along with LNS for good protection or should I get Mcafee instead?

 

Huh? What "latest test" are you talking about? Obviously not VB

 

I'm far from an AV expert also, but I can say from using it on many slow archaic machines and also as an ondemand scanner, that it's a fine product. I'm sure you're referring to the AV Comparatives for this month and that’s probably just one of many sources that would agree that it's an excellent AV especially considering the low resource usage.

 

I think he/she means http://www.av-comparatives.org latest test.

edit: gender correction

 

Ahhh those. I guess you may be correct, but I still wonder if the original poster really meant that or... Hopefully he/she can confirm upon their return.

 

And how can F-prot score higher than NOD32? Not to mention F-prot is sold for little than nothing?


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I'm not commenting on the pros and cons of F-prot vs Nod 32, but rather than just looking at the bottom percentage in the test you're probably referring to, you want to look at the breakdown percentages that lead to the total. Depends on what is important to you... for instance, on WinXP I'm not too concerned about a Dos virus, or other OS performance, and I already know I prefer to run an anti-trojan program with my antivirus... so I'm not too concerned with the antivirus trojan performance either. Everyone has to determine their own priorities and preferences.

Take care... Quinn

 

I'm a he and I was speaking of the latest AV test at av-compare website, the one on the top of this forum.

 

The test you referred to -- & many others as well -- do indeed show that FP is "for real." How can it do it so light & fast & still so effectively? I do not know. Great programmers, I suppose. Plus, it's made in Iceland -- there isn't much to do there during the winter, so I suppose they spend a lot of their time sitting around & tweaking their... uh, programs.

I am a sumo fan, so I draw a parallel. The Grand Champion right now is Asashoryu. He is one of the smaller rikishi, but he is head & shoulders above the current competition, including many who outweigh him by over 100 Lbs.

Same holds true with FP.

I suppose you could turn the question around & wonder why Norton isn't *the best* inasmuch as it is bigger & slower than just about any AV out there.

I look forward to FP's version 4. I hope that they can hold the line & stay small, fast, & VERY effective. I also hope they go to incremental updates.

 

I agree, and also looking to the new version of F-Prot

 

Well. People Think things different. Some would don't even like a DOS virus on their computer. Doesn't matter if it will infect or not. Some would concentrate on solely their own OS protection.

NOD32 is very fast and have AH on Virus as well as Trojan on the lastest version i heard. However F Prot's H isn't so famous. ( Infact i don't know if it is any good at all. ) On the AV comparative Retrospective test. F Prot doesn't score well in detecting "new" samples.

F Prot Doesn't have email scanner, not so good in unpacking. And no HTTP scanner like the latest NOD32 or KAV 5.

However email are still scanned as they are accessed ( or after they downloaded on to your computer ) and it will stop the virus when you unpack the archieve anyway.

So all in all different people have different needs. I; for one like never really liked the Email scanner idea anyway. So the conclusion is that F Prot is for real. But may lack some features you may like.

 

Unfortunately the best heuristics currently available (arguably NOD32’s) are still no match for definitions. I agree the future of AVs lies with heuristics, but the technology is still in its infancy and shouldn’t affect buying decisions too much.

 

Sorry guys but Nod32's new AH does not make any difference. Soooo overrated..

F-Prot really is an excellent AV as old timers know. My only concern is that the resident scanner needs some tweaking options on XP and it is annoying to download 1.5 mb of signature updates even for a single additional virus recognition aka. incremental updates.

 

These & other shortcomings are slated to be remedied in the impending issuance of version 4. When? Ummm... "Who bloody knows?"

 

Hi: I have tried the trial versions of F-Prot, EZ Anti Virus and Nod32.
I have a pc that is used for surfing and Im'ing.
It has a 333mhz,196mb Ram and running Windows 98SE.
I would like to know which of the above AV programs would work on there without slowing down the system?
Thanks alot.

 

F-Prot is a great AV program - its been around for about 10 years and has always been good at detecting new/existing threats.

 

The complete lack of real-time configuration and the inability to exclude programs means it’s just not usable as a primary scanner though. Sooner or later you are going to get false positives or conflicts and then what do you do?

 

"Just not usable" -- Golly, I'm glad my college doesn't know that. We have had F-prot installed on 4 machines for nearly 2 years, with very successful protection. No false positives. No conflicts.

 

I know on my machines where I'm constantly installing demos, software, utilities etc that there will be problems eventually. No AV is so perfect it won't trip up on something.

Also there's no way to prevent it from constantly scanning my firewall or more importantly the huge Skype executable, which then makes games stutter.

I just don’t see how it can be difficult to include an exclusion option.