Symantec vs McAfee

Both are the top antivirus companies, and what kind of technology their offer to us?

Symantec Corporate or McAfee VSE? Which one has better technology against virus, trojans and SPYWARES ?? Which one is more stable?

Has nod32 better technology than both? Why NOD32 is so light, and Norton not?

 

Out of the two, I would personally go with Mcafee if I had to choose between them. Mcafee seems to run alot lighter than Nortons and also detects malicious files a bit better than Norton's did on my system. The only downside to Mcafee IMO is they don't have an x64 version right now other than their expensive corp ver and it uses avtive X through IE for the updates. But if you use IE anyhow it shouldn't make any difference. As for Nod32 I do not have much experience with it other than the short trial that I did and I personally liked Avast! Pro better for my needs but it seems to be a very good product if you also run some Anti Trojan app alongside it.

 

Sorry to say this But!!!!!!! I used Norton and McAfee untill I woke up and smelled the roses 189 Trojans and Viruses later!! Been Clean ever since!!


IMHO (NOD32) I only became a member at Wilders after I purchased Nod32 to see there Official Forum!!

Cheers,

 

And, my wife has used McAfee for several years. She participates on a number graphics forums and similar sites where, while using AVG, she had been hit by several viruses and trojans. Not a huge number, but a few of each. Seems that sort of work, like gaming sites, attracts more than artists.

Anyway, since she began to use McAfee AV and their firewall, she has never had a virus or trojan get through. McAfee has stopped everything. She swears by it and will use no other antivirus.

Now, all that said, she isn't an expert on antivirus software, but is a real world example of McAfee's effectiveness at catching viruses, trojans, etc.

 

McAfee is good. Usually finishes in the top 3 AV's. One of my favorites.

 

I would say McAfee VSE, it seems to run lighter than SAV, and has more features. The buffer overflow module stopped zotob from infecting for instance.

 

In the past, I have had far more success, ease of use, ease of management/deployment...using Symantecs Corporate Edition. I've run into many issues with McAfees network versions over the years, going way back to when we had Win9X clients and the "brad32" client component...up til around 2 years ago with the current management component....what was it called..."Orchestrator"?

Symantecs management console, using good old MMC, proved itself to me to be reliable, simple yet effective, and intuitive.

I have since switched to NOD32 for all clients of mine, for reasons beyond the scope of this thread.

 

As far as viruses and trojans are concerned, both McAfee and Symantec are very good at detection and removal, and are both among the very best on that score. But neither are any use at all against spyware. You'd be much better off with a dedicated anti-spyware app, or better still, a selection of anti-spyware apps such as Microsoft Antispyware, Spybot, Ad-Aware, Spywareblaster, Spywareguard, IE-Spyad etc., etc., to go with your chosen AV.

NOD32 is also an excellent AV app and compares well with the best in the field as well. It is far lighter on resources than either SAV or MAV and has better heuristics than virtually all other AV apps. Given the choice between MAV, SAV and NOD32, I'd go for NOD32, but that's my personal preference. (I actually use F-Prot).

 

Personally, I'd stay away from anything Norton, as their products have become severly bloated and bogged my system down. McAfee is pretty good and not to hard on system resources. I used them in the past but switched, but not due to the AV(I had issues with their spam filter, in their "suite" screwing up my email).

 

have tryed both an was not totally happy with either.

 

I could still remember that in 1999, McAfee took over Dr Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit (my favorite at that time) from Dr. Solomon's Software, while Symantec took over IBM AntiVirus from IBM, and Intel Landesk AntiVirus from Intel. Since then, McAfee used the Dr Solomon's scan engine in their VirusScan product and Symantec used the IBM engine in Norton AntiVirus.

I hate McAfee very much at that time , because Dr Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit was my favorite and McAfee destroyed the upcoming Dr Solomon's version 8 which is under development at that time. McAfee simply plug the Dr Solomon's engine into VirusScan without changing the interface and options. Dr Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit gave me more scanning options and is more configurable.

Without Dr Solomon's, I then went for AVP (which is now Kaspersky) which is my second best favorite.

Although McAfee still keep the VirusScan interface and the less configurable options while using the Dr Solomon's engine, I was able to see that McAfee was able to keep the detection rate of the Dr Solomon's engine by constant enhancement of the engine, and users are required to upgrade to the new engine to take advantage of the new set of signature database. The new engine 5000 is on the way and will be available soon.

However, I don't see any enhancements of the IBM engine by Symantec. As you can see from the signature download page of Symantec, the current signatures can still be used for Norton AntiVirus 2000!!! I could be wrong, but I would say that if Norton AntiVirus 2000 and Norton AntiVirus 2005 are using the same set of signature, why bother to upgrade to Norton AntiVirus 2005? Is it possible that the engine remains unchanged since 1999 so that the same set of signature can still be applied to the older versions of Norton AntiVirus? Is it possible that new signatures for trojans, spyware and adware can be added to the signature base without having the engine modified to cope with the new signatures? I have no idea. Can any Norton expert give a clue?

Michael

 

Mcafee Is a top notch antivirus. It always has detection rates that rival anyones av product.

 

Thanks for the history lesson Chubb... I did not know all that.

Out of the two I vote Mcafee and I have used both.

 

The early versions of Norton can use the new virus defs but can not take advantage of the AT, AS, And worm modules.

 

...which are needed in todays internet enviorment but how old a version would we be talking BigC?

 

The Corporate Edition has changed, a notable change to version 9..and a major overhaul with version 10.

 

Symantec added fairly strong spyware detection in version 10.

 

I don't like McAfee that much. I think it is also a big resource hog and Norton works the best for me. It runs better on my system almost not noticeable and it never let me down and I have been using it for years. Version 2005 is the best one so far.

 

as early as ver 2003 there are options that it cant use and the same for ver. 2004. Ver 2005 is the first that takes full advantage of all the scan and clean options included in the defs. When you update ver 2003 or 04 it scans your comp to see which defs you need and it just wont download the anti spyware /worm detection/or trojan detections to the earlier versions before 2005 since they don't have the modules to use them.

 

Mcafee, seen norton miss and crash to many computers. Used mcafee(most of the time) or trend to clean the computers.

 

Having seen this in action, I still maintain that spyware is best dealt with by a dedicated anti-spyware app. Although NAV can detect spyware, it's pretty useless at actually removing it. And since it's NAV that detected it, the unenlightened PC user thinks that they have a virus infection. Two strong reasons why adding their spyware detection was a bad idea in the first place.

 

Yeah I agree with trickyricky no av company can detect and remove spyware like dedicated antispyware apps.

 

I strongly agree, antispyware companies put all their research effort into this area of malware. A separate anti-spyware program is a must.

 

I also agree with trickyricky but all security suites have that in common.
Security Suites are developed by original firewall companies OR anti-virus companies OR anti-spyware companies.
What makes a company suddenly become an expert in firewall OR anti-virus OR anti-spyware ?
That's what I don't understand, so all these suites are weak in something.
The security suites are created WAY TOO FAST without quality.

Nevertheless the security suites will become very popular amongst ignorant users, they just need to reach the same level of the very best AV/AS/AT/AK/... scanners.
Ignorant users want SIMPLE solutions, NOT the very best solutions and security suites do that and they are much cheaper than the total prize of good separate softwares.

 

Some aren't becoming experts beyond what they know. They are just partnering with other companies that do know. Look at ZoneAlarm's Secuity Suite. ZA did was take their own firewall, which they are experts at and integrate someone elses AV(CA's) and someone elses Antispam(Mailfrontier)(altho I think their new Antispyware in V6 is their own but not sure about this) and package it altogether with a fancy GUI. And on the flipside CA's EZ Armor uses ZA's firewall along with CA's own AV.