Top 10 Paid Antivirus Programs for 2011

They will never get another 5¢ of my money.

No. I ran NAV and other assorted Symantec titles for about 12 years, from 1995 until 2007.
I'm glad they are doing so well.
And I can leave it at that.

 

that's the reason for your anger from Symantec

 

i do not agree on many things about this test but i have no idea why they have put Trend Micro so high. Avast care center is terrible. Avg used to be very responsive. Whenever i sent them files as suspicious they would send an email within 24 hours no matter what day it was (Sundays too). I have sent some dozen of email right now but i never got one single email saying anything at all.
to me this is a .
As far as Norton although i have used it NIS 2010 AV 2010 and KIS 2010 too they were both very good although a bit heavy.They deserve their ranking

 

I am curious too...
So much of a review...

 

Exactly,I faced this issue not only with avast! lab and also ESET lab.Waited for months still don't get any response until I posted my this issue in EAV section.But avast!,I already left aside.It is ok to me if they don't give any response.

 

Thought I might give you an example from the coal-face.

I'm a Computer engineer & I visit homes & small business every day. About once a week, I find a computer that's been severely trashed by Norton 360. It is the most bloated piece of rubbish I have ever seen during 20 years in business. On a severely infected computer, it can take 40 mins to get rid of Norton 360, then another 20 mins to clean the virus.

My latest brush with Norton 360 was on Monday. the poor lady had a few months earlier shelled out good money to renew her Norton 360. The computer was crawling. I would mouse click & have to wait 6 mins for the control panel to open & another 12 mins for add/remove programs to populate. I eventually removed Norton after nearly 1 hour! Immediately on reboot the computer was snappier.

This computer had always had Norton "protection" from new. A scan from Malwarebytes found 811 infections in 15 mins, a reboot then Prevx installed & all is fine.

I really don't understand why there are occasional posts praising Norton. It really is a piece of rubbish. At best it doesn't work, at worst it will trash your computer.

 

Do you check the version of Norton 360 installed, to see if it is the latest? Do you ask them questions such as if they ever disabled Norton for a period of time?

I know two people in the same business. One used to remove Norton frequently on clients systems and I do not know about the other. With the last two versions of Norton Internet Security, they have installed it on hundreds of clients computers, when the client wants a paid solution. Since then, their clients do not have repeat infection problems, unless they do such things as disabling Norton.

 

The "poor lady" spends too much time in Wikipedia and places like that, me thinks.

 

I must agree. Norton had to be disabled somehow, by the user or by some malware.

 

I've been running Norton anti virus products since 2005 till now. Never had a virus peroid, so I to think it was shut off. Now I'm goimg to try Vipre since its half price till next month. And really see for myself the true difference.

 

Norton is No 1 with 98,7% scanner-based detection test and 24/25 real world malware. Avira is No 8 with 99% scanner-based detection test and 20/25 real world malware.

Now it is well known that dynamic tests done on 25 samples are basically the same as playing Russian roulette therefore placing Norton at No 1 doesn't surprise me from an online computer magazine, but placing Avira at No 8 is to say the least ludicrous.

 

Folks, up above when I mentioned Norton, I was not talking about the ability of their product as a virus/malware killer, for all I know it may be excellent. I was talking about my personal experience with the company's support and help after they got my money.

Acadia

 

why on earth do users bother reading these test results?we all know that if they do not match pre-conceived knowledge of what the results should be in that users mind then the test will be criticised/ridiculed if on the other hand the results do match their pre-concieved knowledge then the tests will be held in high esteem

 

Hey,

I don't really think that neither PCMag nor PC World are biased. They usually commission AV-Test.org to conduct these tests and...it looks like AV-Test.org is not very “friendly” when it comes to ESET, Avast! or Avira. Their results are completely opposite to AV-Comparatives which is more “friendly” to ESET, Avast! and Avira so to speak.

I'm not implying by any means that AV-Test are biased or manipulated but their results never reproduce those of reputable organizations such as AV-Comparatives. Thus, I take them with a grain of salt.

For Example: AV-Test claims in its last report run on Windows 7 that ESET is poor on blocking malware on or post-execution [34%] and so are Avast! [41%] and Avira [66%]. Furthermore, all these three AVs are rated low when it comes to protection from 0-Day Threats, being below the industry average of 84%. Those aren't the numbers I saw in the AV-C data published recently.

However, they claim that Symantec is the leader here with 90% all the time. But, if you check the results published by AV-C, it looks like Symantec slipped a little bit which is different form AV-Test.

So, while PCMag and PC World keep commissioning AV-Test to conduct test on AV suites you shouldn't be surprised at all when it comes to the data you will be seeing.





Carlos

 

The review of Vipre AV seemed pretty harsh. Alex's comment was detailed and to the point. Hopefully the PC World editors will respond to explain why their review was so scathing.

Don't know why G-Data, Bit Defender & especially Trend Micro were in the top 5 but there's probably some logic behind it somewhere.

 

IMO one should not think AV-test is unreliable because it doesn't match AV-comparative's results, the two tests are simply not dependent on each other. There are different sample sets at play here as well as different samples altogether.

We also don't know the full parameters of AV-test's testing (e.g. whether packer detections were considered or not, etc.). Anyway, it should be noted that any AV that even qualifies (passes) these tests is good enough IMO for decent protection (Also note that many times if a product does not get certified by AV-C then it doesn't make the cut in AV-test also.....)

 

Hey Firecat,

I respect your opinion as you are one of the most respected posters here at Wilders. However, I still have doubts in regards to the virus test methodology employed to test AV's and security suites.

For example, please refer to the report about McAfee released by both, AV-Comparatives and AV-Test.
Whereas AV-C reports McAfee has a detection rate of 96.8% and NO false positives, AV-Test on the other hand, reports that McAfee fails miserably and has a bunch of FPs...


Whom do I trust then when making a decision of which AV to run on my PC?



NOTE:[I'm not influenced by those reviews anyway. I've made my decision in regards to using ESET NOD32 on my PCs several years ago. However, had I taken those numbers literally, I would've dumped ESET long ago].



Carlos

 

What AV-Comparatives test explicitly uses "0-day" malware?

What are you refering to with "they claim that Symantec is the leader here with 90% all the time."

 

BD, GData, and Trend. Kaspersky is pretty close as well.

 

Lol, this was the con for Avira.

Cons
Cluttered interface


Thats it and ranked it 8th. Give me a break, its the GUI. Simplistic maybe, but now a deal breaker for someone wanted stellar detection.

 

I sense a commitment here.....this must be the real deal!

 

IMO support is paramount for average users no matter if the supposed detection rate is below that of another product. This is why I've always favored BullGuard because in general the resolution to a problem is resolved quickly and efficiently. Maybe F-Secure should hold the top spot as of their 2011 version but they still have a way to go to match BullGuard's support.

I also feel that average users should have a right to expect the product they pay for to be stable in use. This certainly doesn't include Symantec or Kaspersky although I accept that some issues are humanly engineered. Others may disagree as experiences vary but I can only report on what I see via my techs network of customers, most of whom with paid solutions have one of these installed. I also don't wish to sound disparaging to "average users" but simple gripes with a program which you or I might fix with a mouse click can be far more challenging for those of lesser ability. My own experiences also place BullGuard and F-Secure at the top of this second group along with TrustPort, although the latter did have a few issues when they first switched to the (then) new AVG engine.

I too am often confused by the various tests and I'm never convinced when I hear talk of impartiality where commercial interests lie. Added to that, you have (supposed) top performers like Prevx who don't even take part. I see flowery marketing spiel all over the place about "why" but the simple fact remains that if you want to be taken seriously you need to mix it where the metal meets the meat and not where the PR guys touch base for breakfast.

 

Symantec is number one? I find that hard to believe.

 

Why all this attention on such a useless (maybe except for newbies) review?

 

And why is that strange? ( i wont even count this "review" ) but lets talk about other testing? imho only ignorant person would doubt the power of latest Symantec products, hell even in those (unporfessional youtube videos) Norton is always first, let alone the actuall (professinal lab tests, AV -C, AV-Test & MRG)

So basiacally we should ignore all of this results? in my eyes there is only 2 other complete suites other then Norton, KIS & CIS. Sure, there are other decent like Avast, Vipre, F-Secure etc but they are not in same league with KIS/CIS/NIS imo.

Hell you can even install a trial from NIS, and try it your self, in my tests Norton has missed like 5 samples from lets say 300 fresh samples..the Sonar is fantastic, the best BB i ever tested.