Need help choosing AV suite

[Rangan Das]

My home PC is my primary work and personal device. I usually keep it secure with a premium AV and I have switched vendors time to time. Two days back, my PC got infected with a virus from a flash drive that AVG Internet Security could not detect. Only after an update (I am always online), it could remove the threat, which, by that time, has infected my PC and other connected flash drives.

I had AVG Performance Package - which included the PC TuneUp too. I rely on that TuneUp heavily for the performance. However, right now, I am planning to switch from AVG and I could do with some advice.

My PC has a AMD FX8320, 12Gigs of RAM and an old and slow hard drive. I heavily use Adobe CC products and also tons of Visual Studio work. I occasionally play the recent games too. The thing is I need a fast and responsive PC with good protection. I cannot afford staying off work for a day because my PC got infected and I had to take a day off to re-format it all and reinstall Windows.

AVG itself was not fast, but with the TuneUp package, the performance was alright. Right now, I am looking for a premium AV suite that has great detection rates and performance tune-up too.

My budget restricts me to afford Norton right now. So, I would like any suggestions other than Norton and AVG at this moment. Googling "Best security suites" brings up a lot of mixed results.

 

[vagrantsoul]

i personally have had nothing but great results with kaspersky internet security (not antivirus)... never really had any issues where it slowed my system down, and nothing has ever seemed to get through it. the newer norton offerings have gotten a lot better, i just still prefer KIS... that's just my 2 cents on this though.

 

[Rangan Das]

i personally have had nothing but great results with kaspersky internet security (not antivirus)... never really had any issues where it slowed my system down, and nothing has ever seemed to get through it. the newer norton offerings have gotten a lot better, i just still prefer KIS... that's just my 2 cents on this though.

The new versions of Norton is a bit expensive at this moment, for me, at least. I have not tried KIS, but does it come with proper PC tune up utilities? I thought I never needed those things until I tried out AVG's version myself. They really make the PC responsive.

 

[vagrantsoul]

i've gotten response improvements with ccleaner and the like for free, just (half blindly) trust KIS for actual virus protection more than most other options.
https/usa.kaspersky.com/products-services/home-computer-security/internet-security/

 

[Avishek Kc]

Actually i would rather say try everything out....use every trial of AV suites available from AVG, kaspersky, avast, bitdefender, norton, eset and webroot secure anywhere,,,,, this helps in determining urself which one suits u the most, which one uses the least resources yet provides the best protection, which is the least buggy, and which one is the best priced for ur need......

I was in a bigger dilemma as to choose the best AV, i almost used every suit there is out now....from what i have used, bitdefender has the best detection rate but it can be buggier at times and uses alot of resources during scans....kaspersky and eset were kinda good too but i felt just something not right using them

personally, i came across Webroot secure anywhere AV and decided a fair try as its official website said to use the minimal of diskspace, minimal of resources and provides the fastest scan in comparison to other AV.....so i decided to give a try to the webroot secure anywhere antivirus 2015 and got 14 day trial(only downside was they give u just 14 freaking days) .....i started the download and it was under 800kb....and yes it was not an online installer setup, it was actually the full installation file.... it used like 4mb ram and under 20mb diskspace......the detection and deletion method of this antivirus is quiet different from other antiviruses but to my knowledge, i am happy with my current security,,,,i use webroot secure anywhere 2015 with hitman pro 3.....

 

[FreshPineApples]

Eset has one of the best detection rates but I don't know how much of suite it is. They do have a package with a nice firewall or antispywear/phising you can get a trial here http/www.eset.com/us/download/home/ and if you cant afford it you can just redownload the trial every month

 

[CWEric]

PC tune-up are bandage, its better to upgrade your system ram or harddrive.

To maintain your PC use CCleaner every 6 month to clean up unneeded files that pile up on your system over time.
http/www.piriform.com/ccleaner

If you really need a booster that shutdown background programs making them useless then use Razer Cortex Game Booster:
http/www.razerzone.com/cortex/game-booster

Both of these are free.

For antivirus both Kaspersky and Webroot are cheap on Amazon with good customer reviews. Webroot is the lighter program though. Webroot virus detection is weak but its smart monitoring control restrict unknown program from doing any hard and monitor the program changes until webroot gets a definition of where the unknown program is good or not.

There is also Eset if you want a light antivirus that has a better detection rate that stop malware from getting into your system in the first place.

Here is a video of someone doing a comparison test of ram usage of many antiviruses that I have found:
https/youtu.be/RqyrHCJEmAw?t=210 3:30-3:40 for 2 pages chart result.

I trust this to be more accurate though: https/www.raymond.cc/blog/which-free-antivirus-is-the-lightest-on-system-memory-usage/2/

 

[Rangan Das]

Actually i would rather say try everything out....use every trial of AV suites available from AVG, kaspersky, avast, bitdefender, norton, eset and webroot secure anywhere,,,,, this helps in determining urself which one suits u the most, which one uses the least resources yet provides the best protection, which is the least buggy, and which one is the best priced for ur need......

I was in a bigger dilemma as to choose the best AV, i almost used every suit there is out now....from what i have used, bitdefender has the best detection rate but it can be buggier at times and uses alot of resources during scans....kaspersky and eset were kinda good too but i felt just something not right using them

personally, i came across Webroot secure anywhere AV and decided a fair try as its official website said to use the minimal of diskspace, minimal of resources and provides the fastest scan in comparison to other AV.....so i decided to give a try to the webroot secure anywhere antivirus 2015 and got 14 day trial(only downside was they give u just 14 freaking days) .....i started the download and it was under 800kb....and yes it was not an online installer setup, it was actually the full installation file.... it used like 4mb ram and under 20mb diskspace......the detection and deletion method of this antivirus is quiet different from other antiviruses but to my knowledge, i am happy with my current security,,,,i use webroot secure anywhere 2015 with hitman pro 3.....

I think that maybe Webroot downloads their engine using the updates. Anyways, I strated trying out, with Avast. Let me see which ones I like.
Also, can you let me know what bugs you experienced in Bitdefender?

 

[Rangan Das]

PC tune-up are bandage, its better to upgrade your system ram or harddrive.

To maintain your PC use CCleaner every 6 month to clean up unneeded files that pile up on your system over time.
http/www.piriform.com/ccleaner

If you really need a booster that shutdown background programs making them useless then use Razer Cortex Game Booster:
http/www.razerzone.com/cortex/game-booster

Both of the are free.

For antivirus both Kaspersky and Webroot are cheap on Amazon with good customer reviews. Webroot is the lighter program though. Webroot virus detection is weak but its smart monitoring control restrict unknown program from doing any hard and monitor the program changes until webroot gets a definition of where the unknown program is good or not.

There is also Eset if you want a light antivirus that has a better detection rate that stop malware from getting into your system in the first place.

Here is a video of someone doing a comparison test of ram usage of many antiviruses that I have found:
https/youtu.be/RqyrHCJEmAw?t=210 3:30-3:40 for 2 pages chart result.

I trust this to be more accurate though: https/www.raymond.cc/blog/which-free-antivirus-is-the-lightest-on-system-memory-usage/2/

I do agree that tune-up softwares are bandage, but I helps a lot when it comes to systems that encounter heavy usage day to day. It is my HDD that causes the bottlenecking. I keep all my college work on separate VMs that run on Linux to keep them safe. I use Windows for everyday work, games and my part time jobs. I would have benefited a lot in terms of performance if I simply got an SSD, but those things are pricey and I am scared of the SSD wear.

Right now, the things that increase the response time of my HDD are fragmentation and AV scans. Fragmentation is well handled by Windows itself. I am more concerned about the latter. Occasionally, with AVG installed, After Effects took three whole minutes to start, whereas usually it'd start in 30 seconds to a minute. So, I disabled AVG temporarily every time I needed to start After Effects or Illustrator and they'd start up really fast (even for the first time after booting). These are the lags that I am trying to avoid. I felt the AVG PC TuneUp made up for it a little bit.

At this moment, I have only MSE and a Malwarebytes trial installed on my PC and it is really fast. However, Malwarebytes take a lot of time to complete its scheduled scans so I do not plan on keeping it.

 

[Avishek Kc]

Actually i would rather say try everything out....use every trial of AV suites available from AVG, kaspersky, avast, bitdefender, norton, eset and webroot secure anywhere,,,,, this helps in determining urself which one suits u the most, which one uses the least resources yet provides the best protection, which is the least buggy, and which one is the best priced for ur need......

I was in a bigger dilemma as to choose the best AV, i almost used every suit there is out now....from what i have used, bitdefender has the best detection rate but it can be buggier at times and uses alot of resources during scans....kaspersky and eset were kinda good too but i felt just something not right using them

personally, i came across Webroot secure anywhere AV and decided a fair try as its official website said to use the minimal of diskspace, minimal of resources and provides the fastest scan in comparison to other AV.....so i decided to give a try to the webroot secure anywhere antivirus 2015 and got 14 day trial(only downside was they give u just 14 freaking days) .....i started the download and it was under 800kb....and yes it was not an online installer setup, it was actually the full installation file.... it used like 4mb ram and under 20mb diskspace......the detection and deletion method of this antivirus is quiet different from other antiviruses but to my knowledge, i am happy with my current security,,,,i use webroot secure anywhere 2015 with hitman pro 3.....

I think that maybe Webroot downloads their engine using the updates. Anyways, I strated trying out, with Avast. Let me see which ones I like.
Also, can you let me know what bugs you experienced in Bitdefender?

no i dont think so webroot didnot use my internet that much to bog down programs using internet....and yes bitdefender has bugs almost in everything,,,it bogs down almost everything in ur pc....the UI itself gets irresponsive sometimes....