Computer savy folks, whats a solid Anti-virus program?

wytstang

wytstang

I see you.....
All right my Trendmico has expired and all though I feel it did a good job I want to know what is better. I did some reaseach last night and it seems that Kaspersky 6.0 seems to be the best (currently) from the site I visited (pc world, consumer search). Does anybody run Kasperky 6.0? Looking at the stats on Kasperky's web site and they have a lot more to offer compared to Trendmico, NOD32, McAfee, and Symantec. Before anyone says stop going to porn site well NO lol. I visit a mustang site with very little rules and we are free to post links. Well when the link is titles "this chick is hot" you may or may not be heading to a porn site. That and I would like to learn how to download from torrent sites so I want that extra protection. Another reason I want to switch is Trendmico does not offer discounts for renewing , you pay full price every time. Other paid AV give you atleast $10 or more if you renew. Check out what Kaspersky has compared to others

Antivirus. Antivirus Software with Antispyware for Home Computer Security

Any feedback is welcome
 
Free: AVG Free, NOD32



Pay: Zone Alarm is the best



Spyware: Spybot Search and Destroy + Cleandisk + Counterspy



I dont like Kaspersky...didnt find some viruses that ZoneAlarm did find.
 
I have had every major virus software there practically is!!



Hands down, AVG commercial version is the very best there is in my (and lots of others) opinion. It does what it does so gracefully it is astounding ! You don't have to interfere with it at all, it just does it's thing "FANTASTICALLY",downloads and updates itself automatically, fairly cheap, one of the best of the best!

I have had my computer come under severe attack about 3 times (not talking about the occasional bomb) and the only thing I had to do was click on a button that said fix it!!

I don't sell it are have any affiliation with the company, except to renew my subscription every 2 years or so.

I had trouble with every other major brand of virus software!

Changeling
 
If you cannot afford to pay for anything, here are some simple, excellent programs that will protect your system and best of all, they're FREE!



Anti-Virus: AVG Free

Spyware: Spybot Search & Destroy, SpywareBlaster, AdAware 2007



I should but do not use a software firewall. ZoneAlarm was a good one. If it was just me using it, I would install it, but with other novice users using the same computer, for me it was just a hassle trying to set up the right permissions for it to work without it being too Big Brother-ish and the user coming to me because they were too afraid they did something wrong.



If you're planning on downloading torrents, I would suggest to never download and use programs that are information senstive (such as Money, Quicken) and never download pirated virus/adware/spybot program. You're better off using free software because you never know what kind of infection was planted inside of these programs.



Happy porn-downloading! :P
 
LOL I'm not downloading porn lol just music and maybe a old movie here and there. For a firewall I use Kerio by Sunbelt it scored a lot better then Zone labs Free did on a leak test. I can afford to pay but on another forum it seems the free ones are doing just as good a job for the average user like myself according to the members. Changeling I did a google search on the top 10 virus programs and AVG Pro seems to come in at about 8th place.
 
I use Norton Int. Security for now. I have heard good things about AVG and Avast. Look at pcworld.com and majorgeeks.com for ideas.
 
There's lots of good security discussions at Wilders Security Forums. Those guys are like Autopians when it comes to security matters.



There's a few sites that run independent tests of A/V products. A/V Comparatives & Virus Bulletin 100%. From what I've read the best paid A/V is NOD32. They have a free 30 day trial to try it out. I hear it scans very fast, light on PC resources and always has high detection rates.



For free, there's Avast, AVG and AntiVir. The scoop on these per testing is Avast and Anti-Vir have the top detection rates, many times they're rated higher than paid programs. AVG is also good but doesnt score quite as high in detection rates. Both Avast & AVG offer email scanning while Anti-Vir free doesnt. Anti-Vir is supposedly the lightest on a PC's resources of the freebies (won't bog it down). I use all web-mail that has their own scanners so I use Anti-Vir.



Another excellent idea is to learn how to run your PC as a Limited account, instead of administrator. When logged in as admin, that account can do anything/make changes to the computer. With a Limited user acct, the permissions are limited and many infections just can't happen as they are not allowed to. I have a posting of the best way to implement this from a malware researcher who said "IMO, running in limited user mode is actually more effective than running any...I say ANY...antivirus product (free or commercial)." The Windows XP help file also mentions this. Anyone interested, just PM me and I'll send you his posting.
 
I'd also like to second NOD32. You can get a trial, and if you really want to, you could get a crack or something for it. It seems to have very high ratings in terms of performance, ram use (quite low compared to bloatware like norton), etc..



Of course, I don't use any antivirus software because I'm using linux :)
 
I've done the research and testing in the past and found Panda and Kaspersky rated #1 & #2 depending on which reviews you read. Because I deal with computers and software/hardware, I purchase the programs and run them on multiple machines, including my own. I've found that Kaspersky is a very good all-in-one, Internet Security Suite. Panda is an excellent AV, but lacks in firewall protection and a little harder to use/configure than Kaspersky.



For ease of use, Zonelabs Zone Alarm is pretty easy to configure and understand. But because of the fact that it is not yet Vista compliant, I don't recommend it. If you have Windows XP, this will be a good program.
 
+1 for Avast! I have used pay AV from Norton, CA, etc. Avast is free and does a better job then the others I have tried.
 
I use COMODO.



http://www.comodo.com



There really is no reason to pay anymore. These companies mentioned on this thread are all offering pretty good free software. I have Comodos firewall and antivirus running and it makes my old Mcafee look like a scam :)
 
Just buy a mac :bigups



On Windows, I've had the best luck with Kapersky. As stated before, it might miss something here or there but it used the least amount of system resources and it doesn't take over your computer in the process (if you've tried completely uninstalling Norton you will know what I mean).



Did I mention you should buy a mac? (they also run windows now but you'll still need to use an anti-virus on the windows side of things (of course you'll never boot into windows again after you get one))
 
I love Kaspersky When i had it, sad that it expired for me, but in order of preference, i'd go with kaspersky, nod32, and then trend micro. nod32 runs the fastest.



ZoneAlarm is still one of the best firewall software.
 
I am sure I will get flamed for this but I have had pretty good luck with Symantec over the years. The dark years were the NIS products where Symantec started with the integrated suite concept. I run Norton 360 now on all of my Windows workstations and it is nowhere near the resource hog that NIS was.



I have not looked at all of the free security suites out there but I think what gives Symantec the biggest headache is the application control that it uses, not many of the other suites do that. Symantec has the CCapp program which is a proxy for applications. Every app has to go through that program to do anything. This does cause some overhead. As I said though Norton 360 has come a long way and I don't notice a problem with it on any of my current machines and none of them are state of the art by any means.



Screw Microsoft and Apple, the future is Linux :bigups
 
Nitrox said:
Just buy a mac :bigups



On Windows, I've had the best luck with Kapersky. As stated before, it might miss something here or there but it used the least amount of system resources and it doesn't take over your computer in the process (if you've tried completely uninstalling Norton you will know what I mean).



Did I mention you should buy a mac? (they also run windows now but you'll still need to use an anti-virus on the windows side of things (of course you'll never boot into windows again after you get one))
Click to expand...



Ahhh screw Apple, go buy a cheap PC and run Linux. You will be far better off and you will have lots of dough left over to spend on other things ;)
 
I'm sure Norton has improved drastically of the years, but I quit using them long ago because it became a system hog. What really sealed the deal for me though was when I couldn't uninstall one of their products to install the newest version. Sometimes when something leaves a bad taste in your mouth, it takes awhile before you want to try it again. Unfortunately for Symantec, they have really strong competition, some that are even free to use. Unless they gave away the software for free, I don't ever see myself going back to using their products.
 
What has kept me with Norton/Symantec over the years are features that weren't and still do not appear to be available in the free versions. One is the web filtering to keep the kids off of bad internet. These days I have a dedicated machine that runs a Linux based firewall and one of its features is web filtering.



Another feature is email spam filtering, seems that also is not generally offered in the free versions.



Norton 360 now has a backup feature. It will automatically backup user files to an online source or a local resource.



There have been bumps along the way but as I said, I have not had any major issues that I was not able to quickly solve. I was very close recently to switching when Norton 360 would not start on any of my machines but it turned out to be a Microsoft update that was to blame rather than a Symantec issue.



I totally agree though, when you get burned by software you tend to stay away...
 
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