NAV 2005 Or Comcast Offer For McAfee VS9

zcv,

Since you don't plan on having LU and its associated processes running all the time, I think NAV could be a great choice. My personal opinion is that this is where NAV's Achilles heel lies - I simply believe that they have an unstable implementation of this module. Whenever I had a problem with NAV, up to NAV 2004 when I opted for other solutions, it was always an LU issue. Take that out of the loop, and I think most of the instability would be gone. I also thought NAV 2004 ran rings around NAV2002, which I also used (I skipped 2003).

As Acadia notes, you'll see lots of posters here and elsewhere speak fairly aggressively about NAV. Well, it's a simple game of numbers that, as the market leader, they will also likely have the largest pool of disgruntled ex-users. It's simple math. I'm an ex-user who happens to think they have a decent product with some unfortunate issues that seem to be somewhat machine and usage specific. Same with McAfee. To varying degrees, that's true of all the AV options. That's why we trial these programs before selecting a solution.

Another topic which raises hackles regarding Norton is that Symantec seems unable to write anything approaching a complete uninstaller. A typical NAV uninstall leaves all sorts of bits behind, some benign, some apparently problematic. If you stick with NAV, this is really an irrelevant situation; if you are prone to try alternate AV's on a regular basis it can be a major thorn in your side.

As the latest tests from av-comparatives.org show, both NAV 2005 and McAfee VS9 are top tier AV solutions. In terms of detection performance, they are equal. The AV-Comparatives on-demand test is an objective, wide ranging test of one aspect of performance. Both AV's trail other options on the retrospective examination, but that's a much smaller testbed and subject to substantially more variability. Either choice is an excellent one from a detection performance perspective. After that, it comes down to how well they behave in the local environment of your PC and your own preferences regarding look and feel and user-operability - these somewhat local and subjective factors should drive your selection.

Blue

 

Es verdad, señor Randy. I'm running WinME on a brand new computer that my kids had built for me as a birthday present. It dual-boots to Linux.

Why ME? It's mainly because my favorite WYSIWYG web editor (Visual Page by Symantec) won't run except on Win9x OS family. It's the best program Symantec ever did, IMHO, so naturally they discontinued it.

Shalom & aloha..... bellissimo

 

Thank you Acadia.


Piper

 

said by Randy Bell

Hi Randy. You have NAV's Worm Blocking feature and ZAP running together? I disabled the Worm Blocking feature because I thought it was not a good idea to have basically two firewalls running at the same time. I take it it's ok to have the two running at the same time?

 

You know, I was kind of wondering about the same thing. But so far on my system, NAV2005 with all features enabled, behind ZoneAlarm Free, and both behind a NAT Router, I have had no problems whatsoever. Sheesh, does that mean that I am sort of behind three firewalls?

Acadia

 

Your post sums up the two big neuralgia points of NAV very nicely, and confirms my thinking. So NAV2005 it is.

Thank you.

Regards - Charles

 

True, and Norton is not the only AV that leaves stuff behind. Two popular AVs, well, popular in this forum anyway, McAfee and KAV leave stuff behind and this isn't just coming from all the threads of complaints in their prospective forums; I can vouch for that!

Acadia

 

Don't forget Panda. I ran Panda Platinum for a while, and it leaves a lot of stuff behind when you uninstall it. I was lucky enough to find this site to get rid of everything.

http://mrktips.com/pctips7284/tips/UNInstallationandcompleteremoval.html

People always knock NAV, but like Acadia says, there are others out there with the same problem.

 

I think I'll enable the Worm Blocker again and see how it gets along with my ZoneAlarm free.

Oh yeah, I guess you can tell I haven't uninstalled NAV 2005 and purchased and installed McAfee. I don't want to go through the process of uninstalling and installing another AV at this time. I quite happy with NAV 2005 right now.

Piper

 

I have had absolutely no problems with 2005, but I have only had it for a couple weeks now. Also, folks complain that Norton doesn't update enough. I have had four LiveUpdates in the past 24 hours!

Acadia

 

Well curiosity got the better of me, and I purchased and installed McAfee VS9. Here is my non-expert comparison of NAV 2005 and McAfee VS9. These are just my opinions. I'm sure there will be some who disagree.


When you open NAV, everything is right there in front of you....Subscription expiration date, date of last virus update, and what functions are enabled or disabled.

When you open McAfee VS9, you get the Security Center. Not much help to me. To find date of last virus update you have to right click on the icon in the taskbar, click virus scan>about. A little inconvient to find latest virus updates. I couldn't find any place to view subscription expiration date.

Advantage to NAV 2005


Both NAV and VS9 have weekly updates. Both have dailies that can be downloaded. It's pretty simple to download the dailies in NAV. With VS9 it is a little more difficult. As a matter of fact, I never could get the dailies installed in VS9. I read where you use the same instructions used for VS8, but I couldn't get it to work.

Advantage to NAV 2005.
Note...McAfee is supposed to go to daily updates for their consumer version in late summer. When/if that happens, advantage goes to McAfee. JMO.

As for set up configuration, VS9 is pretty straight forward. Not a lot options, but that's ok. NAV 2005 has more options in their configuration set up. I found them both ok. It depends on what you like.

If you like more control, then I would give a slight advantage to NAV 2005.

As for detection rates, I can only go by tests such as av-comparitives, virus bulletin and others such as those. Since my surfing habits are pretty much white bread, I don't go to any dangerous sites, I delete e-mail attachments from unknown sourses, and I usually check e-mail attachments from friends before opening, I would say it's a toss up in my situation. Both have incoming/outgoing e-mail scanning. I like that.

Neither NAV 2005 or McAfee VS9 puts any strain on my computer, 700Mhz, 448 RAM. No slow downs in boot ups, or connection speeds. Another tie.

Conclusion....If McAfee VS9 had the same daily updates as their enterprise version, or if I was able to install the dailies manually, I would most likely go with VS9 as my AV of choice. But I believe NAV 2005 has a slight advantage over McAfee VS9 because of the ease of downloading daily updates. So it's my AV of choice.

Like I said at the top, these are just my opinions. It's just an normal ordinary guy comparing two AVs. Nothing fancy here.