Need antivirus/firewall software?

Rock_Bottom

simpywimpy wrote: »

Where is the best place to look for a decent antivirus/firewall. I've just had a 30 day trial of ESET which works fine but its £45 for two pcs.

Have a look here for free stuff.

http://www.filehippo.com/

Rock_Bottom

superstylin wrote: »

AVG, never had a problem with a virus in the 4 yrs I've used it

Nor me, I think it's brill.

superscaper

I agree with Conor's original point. Eset in my experience is well worth the money and takes far less resources and is far less intrusive than any AV (or security suite for that matter) I've ever used, including all the free ones (AVG, Avast, Antivir). I actually calculated once how much the difference in resource use cost me in real terms and I found that the likes of AVG, Avast actually cost me more in useful resource loss when working than Eset even taking Eset Smart Security's license cost into account. So for my use personally Eset isn't only a better product but works out cheaper overall looking at my PC use "holistically". And the free AVs are a false economy as far as my use goes.

Conor_3

Reggie_Rebel wrote: »

Nice and friendly Conor.

Having tried NOD32, which did not make my systems any quicker than Avast or Comodo, but were faster than with AVG and AntiVir.

I'd be interested in seeing the evidence to back up your 'facts', or is it another fact from the "Conor says so it must be right" school of thought?

http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse/report18.pdf

NOTE THAT THE VERSION OF AVAST IS THE PRO VERSION WHICH HAS HIGHER PERFORMANCE THAN THE FREE VERSION.

To sum up:
NOD32 is 30% faster at on demand scanning than Avast, having a throughput of 13.3MB/s compared with 10.4Mb/s of Avast, only had 8 false positives as opposed to 23 of Avast, had over twice the detection rate of new backdoors, trojans and malware, had 50% higher detection rate of new worms, windows and script malware, and twice the level of detection of new malware than Avast.

Interesting footnote in the article:
Normal users cannot rely on a product that causes too many false alarms - also because it is much easier to score high in tests with a product which is more prone to false alarms than other products.

But Avast is free so it must be good, eh?

Reggie_Rebel

Thanks for that Conor, interesting, if dated, reading.

That report does indeed show NOD32 to be faster than Avast. However it is 30% which is slightly less than 'twice as'.

Does the tendency to over egg the pudding make the comment worthless?

We should be told.

Conor_3

Reggie_Rebel wrote: »

Thanks for that Conor, interesting, if dated, reading.

That report does indeed show NOD32 to be faster than Avast. However it is 30% which is slightly less than 'twice as'.

That's just one type of scan.

And out of date? It's only a few months but ESET have done a fair bit of performance tweaking so if you want to find a more current verson, there's one on their website but I didn't think you'd accept the manufacturers provided information.