Recommended antivirus software

[rahimiv]

What antivirus software do you guys recommend? I had alot of problems with Norton anything... is PC Cillin good?

 

[Toejam31]

How about these two?

<A HREF="http/www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php" target="_new">AVG Anti-Virus System</A> (which is free, by the way.)

Or ...

<A HREF="http/www.pandasoftware.com/" target="_new">Panda Platinum/Titanium Antivirus</A> (The utility I choose after switching from Norton.)

Toey

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[jmecor]

AVG Antivirus 6.0

I just downloaded the full retail version in kazaa in it's great. AVG can block viruses equal to that of the Mcafee's and Norton's. And it's really very light on system resources.

<b>
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
<b>
-BAZ LUHRMANN

 

[jmecor]

I have already switched from Norton Antivirus 2003 to Mcafee VirusScan 8.0 a few weeks ago. There's no way i'm going to get Norton 2004 because of activation

<b>
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
<b>
-BAZ LUHRMANN

 

[qbert]

Hey,

Over the past two weeks I installed and tested the following:

Norton Internet Security 2004
Panda antivirus platinum 7.0
McAfee Internet security suite
Pc-cillin 2003
AVG

Norton slows your system down even with auto protect off. It takes forever to reboot and its annoying. You get a wierd explorer crash when you enter your shared docs through network places even if you exclude this in auto protect and even if you shut auto protect off. Other than that its pretty good. The firewall has a decent amount of features. It is also compatible with scanning pop3 mail. Norton has a pop-up blocker and a spam filter.

Mcafee has a ridulous menu system that is highly annoying. System seemed faster then with norton. Firewall has a million features but the menues are too annoying. Pop up blocker but no spam filter- have to buy it separate. Still got that wierd crash when entering shared docs through my network places no matter what I did. But the reason why I returned it was because no matter what I did I couldn't download my mail in outlook- so it had to go.

Panda takes forever to load when you start your computer- about 10-15 seconds after everything else. It has less features than norton and mcafee but its good enough. That wierd crash still happened even with real time scanning switched off. Firewall was pretty basic but I couldn't take how long it took to load when you start windows.

AVG- just antivirus- not a firewall also like the others. It was OK. It looks like its free.

Pc-cillin- My computer has never been this fast. Antivirus is awesome. No more wierd crashes. I have real time scanning enabled and my cpu usage is non-existent. It doesn't slow your system down at all. Firewall could use a little work but its good enough if you have a router as well. The only annoying thing is that I can't scan my emails with pc-cillin. All of the antivirus programs use a pop3 scanner that scans ports 110 and 25 on your computer. If you have a third party software downloading your emails into outlook then you're going to have compatibility problems. I use enetbot to download my aol emails into outlook. The only software that allowed enetbot to bind to ports 110 and 25 and also scanned email was norton (only worked about 85% of the time- I would get time out errors sometimes because the two programs would be fighting over control of the ports)

Mcafee and Panda wouldn't allow me to download my email even if I switched email scanning off. Pc-cillin can't scan my email either but when I switch it off it works 100% of the time. That is fine because Pc-cillin is the only program that I would consider leaving on real time scanning because it doesn't slow you down.

Pc-cillin doesn't come with a pop-up blocker or spam filter so I got adaware, which is probably the most powerful pop-up blocker I have ever used- way more powerful than norton or Mcafee- it totally shuts your system down from any malicious stuff. Its a pretty good spyware program too. Works perfectly with pc-cillin. Spybot is good too- probably a better spyware program but no pop-up blocker.

I reinstalled windows just about every time I used one of these programs. I would get PC-cillin 2003. Pc-cillin is also coming out with an internet security program in about 2 months which will be really cheap to upgrade. Pc-cillin is also the cheapest if you don't count AVG.

Good luck

 

[rahimiv]

I was under the impression that you cant return opened software, only exchange it for the same software... you know, because they think you might have burned a copy before returning it....

 

[qbert]

I downloaded the full version of panda- it has a evaluation period before you buy it. You just have to fill out a stupid form.

Mcafee- They also have an evaluation period but I bought it from the website and downloaded. I called customer service and asked for a return, which they gave to me. They send you a LOD (Letter of Destruction) email that you have to respond to in order for you to get credit.

Norton was the same deal. I actually bought 2 of those and I was able to return them without a hitch.

AVG is free

I'm not sure if you can return Pc-cillin software. I bought it from their website so I'm assuming you can. I reccommend always buying software online directly from the manufacturer because alot of the time you can return it.

 

[jmecor]

AVG is free

WOW! i never knew that.
I think the commercial AVG version have payments.

<b><font color=purple>
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
</font color=purple></b>
---
<A HREF="http/www.mapua.edu.ph/" target="_new">
MIT
</A>

 

[umheint0]

Kaspersky Antivirus is also very good. Back in the day, before the collapse of the iron curtain, it was developed by the Russian military. Russia went kaput, and a private company took over Kaspersky, but kept the same people on. So, you're getting military-grade antivirus software in a nice consumer-packed program. I like it a lot.

umheint0's phat setup --> <A HREF="http/home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html" target="_new">http/home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html</A><--

 

[Zoron]

Norton slows your system down even with auto protect off. It takes forever to reboot and its annoying. You get a wierd explorer crash when you enter your shared docs through network places even if you exclude this in auto protect and even if you shut auto protect off. Other than that its pretty good. The firewall has a decent amount of features. It is also compatible with scanning pop3 mail. Norton has a pop-up blocker and a spam filter.

I installed NAV Pro 2004... so far it's been ok. I haven't experienced any of the kind of crashes you had with NIS... so I'm assuming that the firewall portion is what's causing the problem. I'm sure Symantec will release updates for those issues soon.

Panda takes forever to load when you start your computer- about 10-15 seconds after everything else. It has less features than norton and mcafee but its good enough. That wierd crash still happened even with real time scanning switched off. Firewall was pretty basic but I couldn't take how long it took to load when you start windows.

I've been running Panda for well over a year, and I haven't had the same experience as you when it comes to slowdowns. It seems to load up a hell of a lot faster than Norton when I reboot. When you say it has less features, what exactly do you mean? It does everything a good antivirus / firewall should do. Another question would be is how often are you rebooting your comp that 10 -15 seconds makes that much of a difference? I reboot maybe once a week on average... and that's only because I've installed updates that require a reboot.

*Shrug* I'm not denying you had problems, I'm simply saying I never had any such issues. Panda has been rock-solid for me, and I prefer it over anything else I've tried. I'm still wondering about this mysterious crash you mentioned though... I've never seen that before with any of the software you mentioned.

Oh... and I've never had a problem with email either...

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[qbert]

Pc-cillin is the least resource hog of them all-read this:

http/reviews.cnet.com/PC_cillin_2003/4505-3514_7-20722940-4.html?tag=subnav

Panda causes about a 19% slowdown of your system and norton is about 5%. I read this article after I used all of this software and it completely backs up what I had encountered. After installing a 3.0 ghz 800 FSB cpu and an ASUS P4C800-E with dual SATA drives in raid 0- I'm sorry even a 5% slowdown is too much. I like speed and I'm not going to let some stupid $50 app slow my system down.

Panda's firewall is pretty slim when you compare it to Mcafee's or something like Zone Alarm. Download a copy of Zonelaram or Mcafee and you'll see the amount of options that are available- even norton has a better firewall. Every firewall roundup review I have read consistently shows Mcafee, Zonealarm, and Norton as the best. I've seen the most positive reviews for Mcafee. Panda's firewall was probably just thrown in there as well as PC-cillin. Pc-cillin probably has the worst firewall out of all of them and its what I use.

On the antivirus portion read this:

http/www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archives/products.xml?panda.xml

Your choice of antivirus software is good-Norton is definately the best when it comes to antivirus- just read virus bulletin's tests. PC-cillin is probably second, followed by Panda and Mcafee (If you're only comparing these 4)

That wierd explorer crash happened on three different pcs and it happenned with AVG as well so it is not a firewall issue. It happenned on my dell laptop and two of my custom machines I built. There was no other software installed except for chipset drivers, sound, video, and network. Three different motherboards with three different video, sound and network drivers? Its real time scanning. When I exclude my shared doc folder in PC-cillin from real time scanning it doeasn't happen. When I don't it happens.

I don't keep my computer on all the time because it would be like a dust farm in there.

I use third party pop3 software -enetbot- to download my aol email. Enetbot is the problem, not the antivirus software-maybe I was unclear. Based on that Pc-cillin was the best when dealing with another program binding to port 110. If you read my post you'll see that I said norton was actually compatible with enetbot, but Panda is not.

Hey- we all have different requirements when it comes to software- maybe thats why we have so many options.

 

[Zoron]

True enough.

My experiences with Norton and Panda have been the complete opposite of yours. I just started using 2004, so I'll have to wait and see. At least they seem to have updates daily now... which is something Panda has had for a while.

To test the firewall, I go to grc.com and use the shields up test. I found that with NIS 2003, my ports were not stealthed, but simply closed. When I check with Panda, all my ports are completely stealthed. I haven't had the chance to try NIS 2004. Granted, the firewall with NIS does have many more options for manual configuration... but firewall config is one of my weak points. As long as it does what I ask of it, that's all that matters.

*Shrug*

Oh well... all you can do is stick with what works for you. My experiences with Panda so far have been much more positive than with Norton... though Norton is a good product. It could be I had different options enabled for the realtime scanner as well.

As with all software, experiences vary.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Jake_Barnes]

To test the firewall, I go to grc.com and use the shields up test

Thanks for the tip - just used the site to test my firwall - I'm aces! Will be spending a few hours at grc today ...


<b><font color=red> “Liberals have many tails and chase them all.” – H.L. Mencken </font color=red><b>

 

[glenvdb]

I won't go in to Norton again, But the best one I did like was "System Suite". V-com owns them now, but they were owned by "On-track". I have not had a chance to use the latest ver"5" but I have been using it since ver 3.0(they called it "System suite 2000". It doesn't bog your system down, you can install it as many times as you wish (no 200 digit CD Key) and the updates are free and very regular. It comes with a firewall, crashgard, One step FIX IT, all in one cleaner and a variety of other programs (well worth the $60 Canadian) I have installed it on over 300 machines and only 2 ever had any problems with it (They incidentally were loaded with viruses before I installed it) the rest were on brand new systems with just Windows installed. The Engine is from Trend Micro systems. You can find the web site here <A HREF="http/www.v-com.com/product/ss_ind.html" target="_new">http/www.v-com.com/product/ss_ind.html</A>

Today is just a syntax error on the basic road of life.

 

[Serotine]

Norton on a server? Don't even try installing Pervasive Sql Server while running Norton - will not work! AVG Free, Well what do you expect from Free? (Dont't get me wrong I am an avid Supporter of Open Source (which is free),It does find most viru. My bet would be Trend Products. With my experiance from many vendors of AV products Trend comes out Tops. If you need Firewall solutions look at vendors that focus on firewalls, intrution look at vendors that focus on intrution detection etc.

 

[sbell61]

This is my third year of using Panda, and my experience with it has been nothing but great. I haven't had any of the problems you discussed. But, I realize that not everyone has the same experiences with software.

Personally, I would recommend Panda over any of the other AV's I've tried (Norton, AVG, McAfee).

For unbiased reviews of the "major" anti-virus programs go to www.software-antivirus.com.

 

[Codesmith]

I used to be a big Norton 2004 fan until I tried Avast 4 Home which is free for home users.

In fact I have converted all of my family and friends from Norton to Avast and I install it on every PC I service.

The downside is that with Norton I would pretty much guranteed to make money once a year when their virus definitions would expire and their PCs become infected.

I had orriginally planned on trying every free AV program out there until I found the best, but I liked Avast so much I just decided to stick with it.

 

[Jake_Barnes]

Review this <A HREF="http/lists.gpick.com/pages/AntiVirus_Tools.htm" target="_new">List</A> - I got it from BitDefender tech dept and found it helpfull. I'm evaluating BitDefender now and like it. I called Trend Micro and found out that there will be "issues" if u use it and Zone Alarm. They also mentioned that some "features" would not work properly with Mozilla browsers - which I use 95% of the time. Hope this is helpful.

[/edit]: Got this <A HREF="http/www.bootdisk.com/utility.htm" target="_new">additional list</A> from 4Ryan6 ...



<b> ...more people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol - W.C. Fields </b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Jake_Barnes on 07/22/04 03:10 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Try NOD32

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[Flagg7771234]

The bad thing is I hate Norton 2004! I think it is a resource hog and the def files are not updated as often as they should.... BUT Norton Corp 8.1 is the boss! low overhead, Def's come out sometimes three in one day. no nag screens when you find a virus.

I can warn about a real bad one! CA Antivirus from Computer associates. The darn thing actualy requires a hard disk device driver to be installed! resource, well can't go there cause I dumped it. I dumped it becosue after 2 weeks there was no new virus defs to install or download! 2 weeks!

Oh yea, both Norton and Macfee techsupport is poor! CA however was great!

just my $.02
kevin

Flagg CNE MCSE CCNA
YAHOO IM @ flagg7771234