Pcflanks review of nod32

The great site pcflank.com has done a review of NOD32 and the results.... Highly recommended...
http://www.pcflank.com/review_nod1.htm

 

That is a pathetic excuse for a review, but then I don't have that much respect for PCFlank...its tests are lousy and have a lot of false positives.

The review focused on one thing only ...the GUI! The reviewer said that if the user doesn't like the GUI that he could revert to "Classic" GUI....huh The reviewer seems madly in love with the GUI (which IMO is the least appealing of all AV GUIs...in fact NOD32 version one had a better GUI although not by much). That is basically all he talks about!

He said he didn't need to refer to Help to configure NOD32...well, I still have to refer to Help frequently and I have had this AV for a year and one-half, but it's GUI is so alien that I still have a lot of problems with it. It is the least intuitive AV GUI I have used. Now an excellent GUI is NAV, McAfee, KAV 5.0, PC-Cillin.

The reviewer obviously doesn't understand that quarantine isn't really quarantine and he says NOTHING about AMON or adv.heuristics....he does mention IMON but he doesn't seem to understand much about it. Very poor review although it praises NOD32...but if this is the kind of junk that is praising NOD32, that is embarrassing.

 

So you like AV GUIs with automatically chosen options(simplicity)? Where you have no control over it ? Hmmm...Strange.


tECHNODROME

 

i think he means you can disable the skin

 

i don't mind NOD32's GUI. infact i rate it third best to KAV Pro 4.5 and NAV 2004 Pro. the best thing about NOD32 configuration is that you can disable the signature scanning, means you can test the heuristic. i don't know about any AV which allows you to do that. KAV 5 maybe a good AV but the GUI is very idiot-proof and it infuriates me. anyway i read that review and all i can say that the English was good.

 

I like to have control, of course. But I had all the control I wanted in NAV 2001,2002, 2003 versions and I love that GUI. I could do exactly the same choices I have in NOD32 but they weren't confusing (although I recall I couldn't find a box to uncheck about something in the 2003 version and had to ask). I don't know about NAV 2004 as I have not seen it or used it. I loved PC-Cillin 2003 GUI. I don't know about the current one as I haven't seen or used it. I loved McAfee 7.0 GUI, again I don't know about later ones. I even liked Panda Platinum 2003 GUI sort of. As for KAV, I haven't tried it in years and I only tried the Lite version way, way back. I have though recently read the entire 100 page KAV 5.0 manual and from the screen shots, it looks like the GUI is very much like NAV. I did note that there are not a lot of choices. But I would have to try it to see if the lack of choices were in areas that really bothered me or not. I saw I could turn off the email scanner. I understand that all the choices (like 4.5) will be available in the more expensive edition but that is expensive and I doubt I would want to spend the extra money!

There are not all that many choices in NOD32. I am forced to load IMON even though I have it disabled. Why do I have to load it at all? With NOD32 version 1, I didn't have to load IMON. All AV are going toward less choices, I think, even NOD32. It's not that I want lack of choice, it's that I want a GUI that I find easy to work with. I don't like the double windows in NOD32's GUI. I have to do a lot more clicking with its GUI and it is irritating to have it bring up only part of GUI when I click on it. "Hide", "quit"? Odd choices of words to me. Then NOD32 really becomes confusing when you get into setting up scanning options...the language is confusing. You can tell it wasn't written by a native American. I don't know who wrote KAV's new GUI but the English version has American influence.

In NOD32 for instance, why in the world do I have to RUN NOD32 each time I want to change something in the setup? That is dumb! And why does it have a "diskettes" button and when I click it I think that means that it will run the program to make floppies to boot from...but oh no, that is the button for scanning a floppy. And if I want to set up auto scanning of the computer once a week while I sleep and have the results on my screen when I first get on the computer the next day, I can't do that! That is a choice? That is terrible. If I put a suspect file in quarantine ...it doesn't get put in quarantine like all other AV would do. It gets COPIED instead of of transferred making quarantine not mean what the dictionary and all AV vendors except Eset say quarantine means...so how anyone could praise such a confusing and potentially dangerous GUI is beyond me. Plus, with quarantine, NOD32 is the only AV I know of that doesn't allow for submission of a infected or suspect file from quarantine! I have less choice with NOD in regard to quarantine.

I have slowly learned most of NOD32's strange quirks but it would be so nice to have a GUI that I could instantly understand and use and the ones that are similar to NAV's are the easy, intuitive ones to use which is one reason NAV with all Symantec's problems still has the lion's share of the American market and I'm sure is a major reason KAV's new GUI looks like NAV's as Kaspersky is preparing to enter the American market with a big splash and they are smart enough to know they need a GUI similar to the one that has the market's share if they want to grab a huge piece of that market.

Choosing an AV is not just about who wins VB tests as Eset would like us to think. It is about many things and all the factors get weighed as a choice is made...that is for the experienced user ... and for the rest ...well, they know NAV and if they switch they want something that looks like NAV (and that is probably why McAfee, PC-Cillin, KAV5.0, Panda, all look similar).