Anti-Virus software

Astaroth

Ok... for over a year I have been running Avast on 2 computers and prior to this was AVG.

My laptop stopped working this weekend and given that my copy of Zone Alarm was telling me that Paint Shop Pro was trying to send emails I suspected Virus problems.... running Avast found nothing, running AVG found nothing, Zone Alarm and Seek & Destroy found a couple of adware things but nothing out the ordinary.

After another forums recommendation I tried kaspersky (which I hadnt heard of before) on a free trial and it found 8 viruses which Avast/ AVG had failed to block and failed to locate on a full scan (and even when pointed at the individual files) plus 10 pieces of Adware that all had failed to find.

Has anyone actually used this software? How good is it? How system resource hungry? Is it just luck it has found so much that others have missed?

Cheers

ivavoucher

I have not used kaspersky so I can't comment but I use NOD32 and it claims that in years of testing it has never missed a virus.

NOD32 has the best detection in the industry, and protects against 95% more new and evolving threats than McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro (AV-Comparatives.org

See: http://www.eset.com/

shammyjack

I second the NOD32 suggestion !

Best AV I have ever run and I have tried them all, very small footprint and easy on system resources .

Can be difficult to set up correctly but there is a fantastic tutorial and settings which you can copy and paste into the program at the following link

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=37509


shammy

THE_MIDDLEMAN

I ran kapersky on my machine for a good while.

It was rtecommended to me to use on lock down so it did not disrupt my online gaming. It was great for that, it blocks intrusions very well.

I would not recommend it as an AV though.

I run:

McAfee - AV / Firewall - So good never had a virus in since I installed it a year ago.
Xoftspy - To scan for spyware
Reg Mechanic - To scan for Reg Changes


Also running Mozilla Firefox 1.5

I game online for loads of hours and do a lot of surfing and downloading. Using Firefox has greatly improved my PC security.

moonrakerz

As a lot of the viruses are written to exploit weaknesses in Microsoft products I would not use any MS products to connect to the outside world. I use Mozilla Firefox & Thunderbird, but there are plenty of others around you could try.

As for AV products they are great - until they let you down ! I used AVG for a long time until it failed on me; tried Norton but that seems to conflict with every other piece of software in the universe ! At the moment am using BitDefender, so far, OK.

There are some good US sites with AV comparison reviews. Also, sometimes, it can be cheaper to (download) buy from a US site that from a UK one.

Astaroth

Hence why I also use firefox other than when needing Active X. Though I do use Outlook but mainly as it has the most functionality when hooking up to an Exchange server (plus easiest to synch with my work laptop)

I was wondering why you dont recommend it for AV use THE MIDDLEMAN ? Looking at a couple of review sites it seems to get top scores across the board where as McAfee seems to be middle of the road.

Dave_T_UK

Last week Aldi was selling AV/anti spam/firewall software for £6.99, I bought a copy and intend to use it when my Norton expires in a few months. It's called "Select eScan" and produced by Focus Multimedia Ltd.
I am curious as to if anyone else has bought and used this software, and what thier opinons are, if any.
Cheers Dave T