KAV or McAfee?

Hello everyone,

I run Windows XP Home and Pro dualbooted on my PC. McAfee on Pro is about to expire, and I am in search for a replacement. McAfee in India does not offer upgrades or renewals:<. I have only two choices now, its either KAV or McAfee for me. I already use eScan on WinXP Home.

Also, if I buy KAV, should I go for KAV personal or pro? I do work with MS Office (Word) documents a lot, check my email everyday and play games.

Please do give me your recommendations on which one I should go for (KAV pro, KAV personal or McAfee). Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Firecat

 

Hi Firecat

It's not even a choice in my opinion. KAV by a mile. The only version of McAfee worth looking at is 8.0i Enterprise and even that needs an Anti Trojan programme as a companion to get near KAV.

 

Just a word of caution about KAV. I like that AV but it bought my system down to a crawl.

I personally use Mcafee Enterprise version 8.0i and i love it. It does what it is supposed to do and does not make my system crawl like KAV.

 

I have used mcafee 8.0i also but the new version of kav 5.0 runs very light on your system it is nothing like the older versions. Protection is outstanding and unless your system is really old it should run just fine.

bigc

 

So If I am to choose between McAfee Internet Security 7, KAV 5.0 Personal and Personal Pro, which one should I go for?

If I activate KAV's built in intrusion detection do I need to disable Windows Firewall?

Bathisland,
KAV 5.0 is really light on most systems. Try the latest build (5.0.227).

I am aware of what Ianb said. The matter of fact is its for my bro and he wants something 'western' and having used VirusScan 7 without problems he wants something very newbie friendly. Can anybody help me in convincing him that KAV is the best?

I'd myself say KAV as it would be great to do side-by-side comparisons with my eScan... If only Firefighter would pop up and display the results of another of his tests... that should be enough proof!

Regards,
Firecat

 

I would just go with Kav personal

no you do not have to disable the firewall to run the intrusion detection option in kav

I have been a mcafee user for many years, but after the release of Kav 5 I won't be going back to mcafee. kav 5 is very user friendly. And the detection is great it will update on the average every hour, sometimes every two hours

bigc

 

I would go with Personal too if he wants simplicity. You can use extended dbase aswell.

FF Tests here.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=59981&highlight=ewido

 

First of all : I agree with all previous answers , it's not even a choice, KAV is by far the better of the two- it is in all the tests anyway ( although NOD32 is even better than KAV ) .
As for the windows firewall- it's not at all wise to depend on that one - I'd turn of that entire security center ( except windows update ) and get a very good anti-virus and a good firewall ( there's some good free ones available if you're not willing to buy one : zonealarm,sygate . I have personally opted for Agnitum Outpost - that's not free though ) .Windows firewall really isn't that good at all and can't compete with any other firewall.

 

Unfortunately my 3518 infected archived samples collection was too small to see the real difference between Kaspersky 5.0 and it's clones like eScan Free. Actually Kaspersky beated eScan with clearly smaller marginal than 10 detections when those both were able to beat the second best scanning engine, McAfee VSE 8.0i, with over 150 detections.

In my mind the Pros and Cons with Kaspersky 5.0 are.

Pros:

- A bit better unpacking capabilities than the clones have
- Fastest signature updates ever
- A bit better detecting rate than the clones, but still only a BIT
- Smaller footprint than the clones have

Cons:

- Price
- Unable to delete/rename infected archives (in my case I need that option more than ever,
to avoid counting detections from scanlogs)
- Some versions are not capable to update with _x or _ext databases

Best regards,
Firefighter!

 

Firefighter,

Did KAV beat eScan because the free version would not scan files above 1-2Megs in size? Because if that's the case then the commercial edition would probably get them (and I use one of the commercial editions). Right?

And how can KAV have a better unpacker than the clones? All unpackers are managed by that file unpack.avc right? Clones will use that very same file anyway so there should not be any difference in unpacking.

EDIT:- What do you mean by some versions not able to use X or ext bases? I won't stick around much longer, got to go to sleep.

Regards,
Firecat

 

He meant that Pro currently ( 5.0.18 ) doesn't support ext bases, but it will in the very eminent MP1, which is a release candidate at the moment link to the unofficial Kaspersky forum.

 

That was the main reason to better results plus one or two other samples more with KAV if I remember right.

Btw, that DC++ 1.668 P2P program mentioned elsewhere in this forum was infected with eScan Free first only by 2 different trojans when Kaspersky online scan found those all 3 trojans. That's because one was even new to Kaspersky and it updated that first.

Best regards,
Firefighter!