FWIW: PC Mag Reviews ESET Smart Security V 4

Don't know if this is too late to be of any use. But I used BitDefender (antivirus only) for four years, until my first 3 months with the new BitDefender AV 2009 garbage (program, NOT detection). Besides performance issues (though wasn't any noticeable system slowdown), crashes, you-name-it...aspects of the interface are so bizarre, confusing, and confidence-UNinspiring that I can't even begin to describe them. Protection headings in the "simple" view contradict and overlap each other; the mouseover descriptions contradict the text you are "mousing over" and all of it contradicts the user manual. It appears as if the GUI is inebriated, and just trying to reconcile the simple and advanced settings views is almost impossible.

The earlier V9 and v10 (the latter being free now, although a little more CPU-intensive in an on-demand scan -- not a big deal) were generally fine. Numerous processes running, but not resource intensive. And there were some unnerving crashes of the program and install issues. Although, I had a lot more of those on one pc than the other, so no doubt some systems will be problem-free with BD while others will have issues (most of which can be fixed).

While AV 2008 also has some odd quirks, once everything is set up (including disabling some of the un-needed features, and searching hard for some non-intuitively located features), it was very quietly efficient, and from what I can tell effective -- seemed to catch viruses and Trojans and dispense of them quickly (I always chose quarantine as the first automatic action instead of clean, and then delete if that failed.) Once in awhile it would report being unable to delete a file, but those tended to be the flase positives BD gives once in awhile, or tracking cookies, or in-propriety-archive malware (e.g., Outlook pst file). I easily dispensed of them myself (once or twice needed to do it in Safe Mode). Once in awhile there would be a problem (e.g., new program conflict), which I could solve by Googling or waiting for a pushed fix on a known bug.

In four years with BD, my system never once had an infection, and while I am very cautious, I do sometimes end up on malicious-intent websites. It played nice with Zone Alarm. It's very inexpensive, too, and usually scores in the upper-tier in the various detection tests, although I put more faith in my four years of real-world experience. The worst aspect was when BD itself would crash, or sometimes the tray icon would just disappear or turn from red to grey to show that it was not functioning. Although, I would see that this was usually just the gui -- Task Manager would confirm that the actual realtime protection was still running. Besides, I rarely had this problem with BD AV 2008

But I was so fed up during my weeks with the 2009 version... my new license wouldn't work with 2008. If they had let me know just a little sooner that they could convert my license back to 2008, I might not be posting on the NOD32 forum. In fact, shortly before I dumped BD its realtime detection wasted no time detecting and quarantining one of those fake AV Trojans (an apparently- aggressive one) when I happened upon a malicious page (or ad on a page). That effective response gave me pause about switching, and still does.

So again, in summary, if you can still get BD 2008 it's worth a try, but avoid 2009 like the plague. I would never have even *considered* switching but for the 2009 version nonsense. I'm considering going back to 2008 myself. I really, really like NOD32 in a lot of ways, but there are some areas where I'm less than confident in it thus far, and again I never had an infection with BD. NOD has (thankfully) already intercepted a few "nasties" for me realtime, and I have apparently avoided infection. I like that. What I don't like is that it seems slower at detecting and quarantining than BD was...a little "too laid back." Although since only NOD32 was running at the time, I obviously can't say *for sure* that BD would have detected or acted quicker in these two cases. Maybe it wouldn't have this time. But my four years of infection-free experience with them lead to an educated guess that BD *would* have been quicker and more aggressive.

 

Thanks for the info, I appreciate the help.

I'm sticking with ESET Smart Security v3.0.368 for now. It works perfectly on my machine and more importantly, I feel extremely secure using it. I just wish the bugs with v4 would get addressed in a more timely fashion. ESET have just released a new build and it's still beset with the problems of the previous ones....very poor from ESET.

Anyway, thanks again

 

What is wrong with Zone Alarm ?