Top 10 Anti-Virus products

Unfortunatly I don't have a say lol, how easy is 5 to use? well compared to 4

 

You should really try KAV 5.0 or KAV 4.5, I too used to use KAV 4.0, its very buggy and uses a lot of resources.

KAV 4.5 is MUCH faster than 4.0

and 5.0 is EVEN MORE faster. And 5.0 has an excellent interface. Try KAV 5, I'm sure you wont be dissappointed.



Regards,
Firecat

 

Ta for the advice, I'm gonna have a 'meeting' tomorrow with the boss

 

u wont regret it

 

When I first started reading about anti-viruses on Wilder's I was almost afraid to reveal that I was using Norton AV 2003. Considering where I go to discus AV issues i would say that any sheep around here would be using NOD32 or Kaspersky. I have stuck with NAV because it's free (for me), I am familiar with the way it works, and it has done a great job for me. I have used several online and free and trial products. I feel rotating them in will add capability to my virus protection, but at it's core I keep NAV for its strong real time protection, and reasonably fast on demand scans. The other's I have used in the secondary role include Bit Defender, Panda, Trend (PC-C), AVG, McAffee, RAV (to bad about M$ getting them), NOD32. Most of them had their good points.

The main thing I wanted to say was that if someone is consistantly no.1 selling product of anything, you really can't believe it is a terrible product? You might not appreciate it, but obviously they are doing something right.

As to trend's popularity, well, they provide a great service. If you are online you can scan for viruses, you can use it as a backup, or confirmation. It's fast, it's free, and fairly good.

Norton provides huge amounts of free removal tools that i'm sure have been used millions of times. They have free vulnerability scans, and a free database, some simple tutorials on technical procedures. Through whatever arrangements they have made most computers come with 6 months free NAV already installed. That is the way alot of people have been introduced to AV's.

It may not have occurred to anyone, but computer users that were caught with their guard down, but were bailed about by Norton, Trend, Panda, AVG, or McAfee have earned the business that their services have one them.

As to the comment of 100 percent reliable...my guess that if they make it, it will use so much of your resources that you would be better off being infected. I will settle for reasonably cheap, effective, efficient. and easy to use.

Don't get me wrong...you have got me very interested in trying at least four A/V's I havent tried yet. It just has not been convenient enough for me to try them yet. Maybe then I will see how dangerously I have been living!

- HandsOff


P.S. special thanks to Panda. they caught a .wmv trojan downloader on my machine. this fairly new threat exploits SP2 and wmp10's (mis)handling of Digital media rights. How rediculous! wmp-10 plays the .mwv and finds the material is "protected" so automatically goes to the web to retrieve the digital rights...only it receives something entirely different. Will M$ ever learn

 

Hi hands .
If it works for you , you should stick with it . One thing though . The # 1 selling product means nothing . It only shows that alot of people BUY what they hear alot about . Symantec is everywhere . It is the ones that choose to " explore ' the options that finds a gem . Not bashing NAV . I do not like it as I have used it . So what . My opinion . It is good that you found something you like and works for you . Good luck .

 

Hey Hollywood,

That was very well stated, and there have been times when I didn't care much for NAV either, but I feel like at this point I have changed what I could, and I can accept the rest.

If you really have a hollywood pc with a lot of movie clips on it you may want to try Panda's free online scan. I'm not plugged in enough to the Anti-virus community to know which AV's look for this DRM vulnerability. I don't scan mine all the time because I did not think they were a likely place to find a trojan.

One thing, if you do, the scanner is quite slow. If you scan just video files, I'm quite sure it would be quick, but an entire system takes, well, twice as long as NAV.

- HandsOff

 

Thank you my friend . And again . I think it is great that you have found an AV that you like and want to keep . So many people are constantly looking . I keep looking too !! I am happy with what I use and will not leave it anytime soon . And , with all the NAV haters around , it took alot on your part to state what you did ! Congrats . Never be sorry or ashamed of what you use . I hope it continues to work well for you

 

Sorry to bring up this thread again but I would also like to input some information here. The largest "corporation" in the USA uses 3 of the top av's listed here, Symantec - McAfee - Trend as a extremely distant third. This corporation is the United Stated Government. So think of all the computers in all of the Government offices that run mainly Symantec, and McAfee and that can help put into perspective another reason for the severe difference between #1+2 then 3. HTH

 

Y'know....nowadays McAfee is slowly becoming more popular than Symantec. For the first time ever, I saw my system builder recommend McAfee instead of Symantec to all its customers. Cant blame them, McAfee's not a bad product now, but its not 95/100 either, their support is OK and detection is great. Not bad at all.

 

Well, McAfee is actually the grandfather of all AVs. Norton came later...

 

As I recall McAfee & Dr Solomon came along around the same time. To view these & other golden-oldies, click HERE.

 

Oh god, whatever happened to Thunderbyte?

Nice link!

 

It's quite obvious why Norton Antivirus is in the top 10.
Lots of users have a pre-installed Norton-a 6 months version in most cases-on their brand new pc and don't care to try something else,they just renew the subscription after the program shows it's expiration warning.

A little story;
a friend had Norton 2004 on his system,maximum security settings and latest updates installed,but had a lot of weird problems,ie random reboots and slow performance.
I uninstalled his Norton,installed Avast Home and caught 3 virii that Norton missed.
Those 3 already multiplied themselves to 11 different files.I cleaned them out,reinstalled XP again on top of his damaged installation.
His system is running fine for over 4 months,and Norton Antivirus is on his "to avoid" software list now.

I don't wanna bash Norton,and it works probably very well for most users,but I'm an Avast Pro user for 2 years now,and very happy with it.

 

Norman Data Defense Systems bought it.


tECHNODROME

 

Handsoff-

Actually, in September of 2002, NAV 2003 was not all that bad a choice. A year later the disasterous NAV 2004 release gave NAV a black eye. NAV 2005 is greatly improved. Some issues remain, including excessive resource usage and many difficulties with uninstalling. However, NAV 2005 garnered second place in detection at AV Comparatives, beaten only by Kaspersky. Vodka anyone?

 

As I recall, 2004 was when they had the brillient idea to use some kind of activation scheme which left hundreds of thousands of legitimate users unprotected for up to two months. (that is if they didn't have the brains to switch to another product).

I am still using NAV2003. I can still install the latest definitions and it seems to work well. If I were to have to name a possible weakness it would be scanning in compressed archives. I say this because that is where some of the others find something that was missed. None of the viruses detected were actually active. If they were, perhaps NAV would have detected that. I have had the oppertunity to upgrade to 2005 for free but I don't know if they are still screwing people with the activation, and I don't feel like being a guinea pig.


-HandsOff

 

I realize your tag line is tongue-in-cheek, but it still put me in mind of a contest back in ~1954, between a fellow using a Japanese soroban (a 5-buttons-per-stack abacus) VERSUS a fellow using a Friden electric calculator.

Each of them did the same long series of addition, multiplication, division, & square root problems. Both participants were very skilled. The soroban guy won by a mile.

 

No Dog, the issue most people have with Symantec is it's detection rates are pretty poor. And it's bloat of course.

 

Norton is only good in tests. In real environment it usually lags far far behind due to weekly updates (i mean how can they have only wekly in these day ).
And why should i download huge standalone packages manually to be up-to-date when its update system features small incrimental updates with auto update system?
But they are again only weekly grrrr.

 

Patrician,

Could you please point to any test, controlled or informal, where Norton has poor detection rates? No, the issue is not general detection rates with Norton. Part of the issue is bloat. Part of the issue is tight coupling of the program to everything possible, which does lead to general stability issues. Part of the issue is the stability of the live update module itself, which can cause users to transiently vulnerable to the latest widespread infection making quick rounds on the Internet.

Blue

 

The weekly updates and the large IntelligentUpdates/Rapidreleases is what I hate most about NAV also. I can't see why a company that big can't offer daily incremental updates. Maybe it's because they just don't want to.

 

Rezjor,
Firstly, you refer to Norton's downloads as weekly (intentionally?) overlooking the fact that they provide updates much more frequently during an actual outbreak of a dangerous new threat. Why, there seemed to be weeks on end in 2004, when the automatic updates were coming in at least once a day. I may be wrong, but if there are no new serious threats is there a good reason for me to be downloading an update. And again, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that during such crisis Norton offers free removal tools for those people whose daily, or hourly updates do not include protection from a virus that Norton has already devoloped and distributed to their customers. Food for thought...

I happen to like the "huge updates" because it allows me to back up all the definitions. I store backups for my system every few weeks. The day might come when I need to back up to a very old update and need current virus definitions without connecting to the internet. Unlikely? Perhaps no more unlikely than being wiped out by a two day old virus that is not regarded as a potent threat.

As to this detection myth, again, I may be wrong, but in the course of comparing the various antivirus programs out there, it struck me that ALL of the major AV's give you almost perfect protection in most situations. When you start comparing detection of things that don't even exist, then you can claim one works better than the other. I personally am more concerned with the degree of control I have on the settings, the degree of customization you have on on-demand scans, the amount of time that scans take, and the ease in which the protections can be circumvented.

As an example, I used NOD32 in the very early days (it may well have improved) back then the on demand scan was limited to selecting partitions, or through the right click, a file or folder. Unfortunately that's not that uncommon. With Norton I can select any combination of folders from any number of partitions and exclude what I like. That is a real advantage, not a theoretical one.

I happen to agree with Steve, that the so-called resource demands is a non-issue for all but the most archaic of computers. It may interest you to know that my internet connection for this bulletin board is currently using more memory that all of nortons ant-virus related processes combined. I think people sometimes oversimplify too much. They don't get the five small running processes may actually be more efficient than one large process. All they get is that 5 > 1. Or else they think NAV makes 5 process just to be mean. They don't do anything. The software engineers were just bored. If that's the case I will be the first to offer them a beer! That was a good one.

I'm not saying NAV2003 is best because, a) I havent tried all others, and b) It would totally depend on the circumstances as to which is best, not to mention c) nobody knows what threat is around the corner and which AV will be successful against it.

There are lots of things NAV has done that demand criticism. I don't think the updates issue is a big issue. I don't think weak detection is an issue. If someone can point out cases where NAV held back important updates, or did not offer comparable detection protection for actual viruses that were being successfully blocked on computers being protected by AV's from most of the other top ten viruses products then there's a problem.

These dection comparison games. It's just marketing and nerd olympics. I heard someone say something like, " Spyware is being defined by spyware makers as that which they don't produce". Well, if no one has said this, let me be the first: "An AV's potency is being defined by what certain AV makers are able to detect" See how it has shifted from 'protection' which what is we need, to 'detection', which doesn't mean a damn thing.


That said, Rezjor, I found your product "NTFS Streams Eraser", Excessive Software to be the best (and only) product that help me with my ADS streams situation. Therefore I am indebted to you, and defer to your expertise on computer programs. If you ever need any help finding real problems with NAV just give me a buzz, there are lots to choose from.


- HandsOff

 

Re-reading mine and the last few posts I got to thinking....

"Dang! This Steve guy is always right or what?!"

- HandsOff!

 

NAV
1 has Weekly updates (thats bad)
2 Its really hvy on cpu resources.
3 Doesn't have good detection in the wild.

Nod32 has great detection and it has really fast scan plus its really light on cpu resources.

But i would go with KAV i know its a bit more hvy on cpu but no were near as NAV.
Plus it has the best detection rate that for me is the most important.