Best Antivirus

Oh and NOD32 does not slow down ones machine like Norton and others AV's do.


 NOD32
      http://www.nod32.com/home/home.htm

And make no mistake Norton is extremely good as is Trend PCcillin and McAfee

from my side

Norman is best.

www.norman.com

Thank U
SystmProg

OK, what do you think about kapersky, and avg, be more specific and compare them to Norton

i don't trust Norton because it uses so much system resources and slow down system too.

What do you say CrazyOne ?

I'm a big fan of McAfee, my clients, my users don't have any slowness from it, the virus removal is good, the spy-ware removal and alerting could be better, Ad-Aware is still ahead in that respect, but overall it's a wonderful product for us. To each his or her own, every one has a bad experience or two with one of these products... You simply should get Demo's of them all and try to run your own test's as equally as you can. The one feature that Mcafee has over norton, in my experience with both, is that mcafee detects things like keyloggers, malware, password crackers, and some of those stupid backdoor games that users DL (elfbowling comes to mind, whack-a-mole...) . McAfee detects these in realtime, on download, what I've found from notron, and avg, is that they detect after the fact during a complete scan. McAfee's on access-scan is very well done, and one thing that it does that sometimes annoys me, but is ok all in all, is that if I'm sweeping for spy-ware with ad-aware or spy-bot, once mcafee see's that a file that matches the viri/maware/sypware definition is accessed by one of these programs, it cut's that programs access to it, and tries to deal with it on it's own. While Ad-Aware will still list the program as one it is going to remove, mcafee has actually already acted on it, and removed or deleted it. Again, system resources are still there, and it keeps us pretty safe. Our users have piii 733's or less, running win2k, 512 or less ram. We have over 2000 emp's worldwide using the product with no complaints. I'll have to give NOD32 a try sometime.
Just an opinion/testimonial... I've not done side by side comparisions. norton 2004 was the last itteration we used from symantec.
-rich

Hi Shai,

The BEST anti-virus solution is Kaspersky, period! But it being the best has its price and that is that it takes a lot of resources. My advice (if you have the money for it) is to have kaspersky as an on-demand scanner and use NOD32 or Dr.Web (VERY GOOD!) as your realtime scanners as they are very low on system resources.

Forget about Norton, it's a system hog and not as good as the others mentioned here. It is better at marketing. :)

Greetings!

>>>Forget about Norton, it's a system hog and not as good as the others mentioned here

wrong and I mean very wrong. You don't know what you are talking about when it comes to Norton and its ability. Yeah if one still wants to run OS,s that MS no longer even sells and will drop completely support for (Win95, WIn98) and then ME where System Resouces are an issue then yeah NORTON does take a bit of those resources. However System Resources are not an issue in Win2000, XP, Win2003 and the upcoming new OS called Longhorn. Get this straight MS no longer in the next year or so will provide support, or even sell, any OS that is NOT NT baseed, Which are Win95, Win98 and ME and all MS OS's after ME do not have the System Resources problems at least to the point that System Resources even really exist in NT based MS OS's.

Heh, sorry but I know what I know and that's a lot. :)
18+ years of computer experience and we have our own hosting company with own NOC so you can say it's not all about nothing.

Enough bragging, if you don't believe me I suggest everybody read about it themselves on well repected forums like wilderssecurity.com and many others. If you don't care about good software that does it's job without stealing precious klokcycles go on and use Norton but I advise strictly against it.

CrazyOne does not agree with me and that is ok. Don't take our word for it and try it yourself.

Greetings to all!

Fair enough digibeta. I have been there and done that and Over 15+ years never have 1000+ plus machines that I been Associate with has any of those machine's got a virus. But every other machine that were not running Norton at that time and before I discovered NOD32, did get hit with viruses. And if you look at my, I think, second comment you will note that I said one of reasons I changed over to NOD32 is because it is lot more inconspicuous overall and is rated ahead of other AV's in independent studies and Norton comes in ahead of the rest of AV's. And Norton outside of NOD32 has the most consistent high ratings like number one or two over all other AV,s, end of story.

In that case we can conclude that it will work for some and not for others. Honestly, I used it for a long time and somehow it allways seem to do something 'wrong'  with my system after a while. Agree, I also never have been hit by a virus while running it but I was not talking about it's detecting capabilities.

NOD32 is a very good product and I will recommend it to everyone just as I recommend Dr.Web. If you don't know it yet use google to find some info about it and be suprised.

Let's stop this discussion as I think we can go on and on and still think we do think the same about this. ;)

>>>Let's stop this discussion as I think we can go on and on and still think we do think the same about this. ;)

Good point :)

I tried to avoid this in my posting, as everytime someone ask's a question like this, it never fails to flame up a bit, but this case was not a bad as others.
From my post above:
To each his or her own, every one has a bad experience or two with one of these products... You simply should get Demo's of them all and try to run your own test's as equally as you can.
and
Just an opinion/testimonial... I've not done side by side comparisions. norton 2004 was the last itteration we used from symantec.

Kudos to all for rising above it!
-rich

Has anyone else looked at EZ Antivirus 2005? I had NAV 2005 on my machine, and its still a bit of a hog. and that is the only thing I could think of that would make my normal.dot funny (I have since 'rebuilt' that also) . I put EZ Antivirus on my machine and the 512 onboard seems to be fine.
We have some 19000 machines in the area, with most users being um... kids. we have Norton Corporate 8.1 running oin all the servers (134 or so) .. 8.1 client on XP/98, 7.6 on 95. We force the updates on the machines/servers. We are able to isolate the few breakouts (some kids think they are hackers). the latest Corporate editions (9.0 and 9.1) are in the process of being testing. 9.1 is supposed to have some 'malware' capabiltiy. However, it is seriously lacking in that arena. symantec has never made a claim for spyware. McAfee has something out there. We are looking into a couple enterprise wide solutions as we speak.

BitDefender?

as large an 'enterprise' as where I work... no non name brands, we are however looking at finding a 'no cost' alternative. Host file loopback perhaps.

Hey!

All you guys praising NOD32. I havent tried that. But surely, I have tried Norton 2000-2005 (all versions). I think 2003 version was The BEST! in terms of resources. Still, it consumed a lot of resources. So, I switched over to other anti-virus. I liked McAfee 8 Pro Combined with it's firewall and other anti-spam etc. But, the best antivirus was definitely TREND PC-CILLIN 2004 which cleans a whole lot of viruses. And please dont try to clean spyware with the help of antivirus. TO clean adwares, and spywares please use GIANT antispyware which uses a little resources but it is worth installing even if for only 1 run. It cleans almost all spywares that other antispyware dont even detect. I have tried about 15 popular antispyware products. I found GIANT to be the best. As for antivirus, the competition is tough! Each of them have their pros and cons. Each one can detect a particular type of virus which others may not. Otherwise, for regular purposes use Trend PC-Cillin 2004 or McAfee or any other as you please!

mmmmmmm.. just in case you have not heard, Giant was just purchased by...you guessed it... Microsoft

hey...i just got to know about the giant and MS partnership!
Hell! There goes another goos piece of code in d crap basket!

I guess then its for Suse 9.2..being a Novell admin, there is not guesswork. And use Firefox from there

I have been a die-hard Norton fan for yeas and recently switched to avast! . It seems to be much more intuitve and seems to use less system resources

avast? excuse my ignorance

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
-rich

I'm sorry. I don't do freeware when it comes to anti-virus. The product may or may not work. Maybe it takes pay for support. I can see that happening (note the sarcasm). Maybe they make enough off the commercial version? (yeah..right!) The home user market actuality is larger than the commercial market.. even discounting. There are literally 100's of antivirus programs out there. If you want to make a point about what is the best out there... show me some stats! (sho me the money) ! LOL.
Maybe I am the crazy one around here. confidence does make the difference for me.

Well as far as which is best everyone has thier own opinions.  Personally the two (if only two) i'd stick away from are Norton and Mcafee... those two are known version ater version to miss viruses ..

the best i say is bar none, KASPERSKY ...the 5.x versions have gotten a bit too "user friendly" for my tastes, but oh well....  a ok second choose is Bit Defender ...actually BD is very good


from NOD, to Norton to Avast to pc-cillin i have had and seen alot of trouble in those... BD or Kapsersky are your best shots

Sorry xmetalfanx but your assessment is not correct. Norton constantally rates at the top of all anti-virus programs throughout many years, bar-none, when it comes to catching and stopping viruses. And KASPERSKY usually ranks near the middle or below. Sorry xmetalfanx but your data is not correct by a long shot.

I switched to NOD32 and have because of what I saw in testing results for the past three years. In which NOD32 and Norton kept topping the test results charts, period. Also I just wanted to try something else. It really does not matter overall if an AV hogs resources, Especially Since there or no SYSTEM RESOURCES in any MS OS past ME. And anybody that keeps running any version of WIN98 or ME is in for a big shock if they don't upgrade. Why? well because MS is going to dump and not support these OS's sometime this year. Which means that these OS'es are dead and most software developing company's will not develop or support any software on a MS WINDOW's OS that MS does not support. If you think I am wrong then look at how many companies support or author programs for the WIN95, not many and in fact there is very little support by third party apps for WIN95 now. Which means one needs to really look at what the future holds. MS HAS pretty much told us what the future holds, and that is they are dumping codes OS related to all WIN98-WINME code, in other words as far as these OS'es go in short MS is saying goodbye to them and only support nothing but NT based OS'es like WINNT, WIN2000 XP and WIN2005 and any all upcoming OS'es like LONGHORN.

The point being that none of us really knows what is best for the other people when it comes to AV's other than DO NOT RELY ON , at all cost, FREE AV's.

The AV market looks like it could be on the verge of collapsing and only the big time players will survive. Norton and McAfee and Trend will probably be around for a long long time. However Microsoft is and probably will incorporate a very sophisticated AV into their OS's.

Now I know MS has already merged and/or bought more than 1 AV company. But it is not the only one,s they are involved with. And no these AV's do not rate that good overall. MS hopes to take one of these AV's engine and expound upon it because they know the AV is not that great but has the potential to be great. They did not by-out these AV,s because they were very excellent but that it was affordable to them and they felt that they can rewrite the code to fit in with their upcoming OS'es.


If I am a cooperate user I would go, in order, Trend, Norton, McAfee. If I am personal user then I would go with, NOD32 or Norton then Trend(PCcillin) then McAfee. These AV's are rated as the best overall.

Hmm, I've had some trouble with Kaspersky 4 and 4.5. Updates and scans can be tricky if they kick off while logged in as a mere PowerUser (either Win2k or WinXP). For example a full system scan (over nearly 2 million files) can take longer than 10 hours (7200 rpm harddrives). Worse, at times while such a scan is going on I am nearly prevented from using the computer.

More on the side of quibbles:  KAV wants only one instance of it's AV Control Centre running. It has detected many emails that were most likely infected, but I have seen at least one false positive on a text file in a zip archive.

Hey you all,
I installed Nod32,  Kapersky, NAV2005 Sysworks premier and AVG (1 at a time)
I tested all and here are the reasults:

sys hog:
1:NAV
2:Kapersky
3:AVG

scanning (quick and best)
1:NAV
2:Kapersky
3:Nod32

When I play Heavy Graphics game like doom3, NAV doesnt slow me down, but Kapersky makes
the fps go down.

I am sticking with NAV, I trust their live update, their scaning and utilities.

Thanks for all of your replies :-)

Good assesment shaiberg1.

Again I must emphasize that system-resources are a moot point with the Windows NT (Win2000, XP etc) platform. Those who continue to run Win95-98-ME and hope to have an outstanding AV after the year 2005 should rethink their computer-using future. Because it won't be long now befor AV vendors and other software vendors stop supporting these platforms. So why spend ones time and money on technology (Operating System speaking) that well be in all intent and purposes well be dead in a very short time.

After a long review process, I eventually chose CA Antivirus 7.1 for our network.  It's, by far, the antivirus with the smallest foot print and it uses almost no resources even when running a full system scan.  It also JUST does virusscan, so I can choose a separate anti-spyware solution and mail filter.  You also get centralized management.  

I gotta say that i dont agree with all guys that answerd ... the best Anti virus is not an anti virus at all ... you cant relay on a piece of software that works with Black list ... it's not Zero day protection ... you must use a new breed of security software today to prevent Viruses and any other Malware ... i suggest checking Trustware Antimalware approch and also Prevx ... both are kinda of Desktop intrusion prevention products ... anly Antimalware as a special apprich using Virtual PC or you can call it Virtualization at least according to Gartner it's the next line of defence ...

Painwarlord

There is NO "Best" when it comes to antiviruses.

Actually, I dont run one, only what I do is scan all my backed up files and thats it. ONLY I care about my data and nothing else.  If I do get a virus the rule is, scan the backed up data reformat, then reinstall. No biggy for me.

COMMON SENSE is the real key. Do not open attachments, dont visit strange XXX websites. read mail as PlainText...bla bla bla and you'll be OK.

As for Network viruses which you cannot see as attachments like Sasser, MS Blaster, Welchica (worms) A firewall Router is all you need for those.

But theres no real need for a real-time virus scanner. Just scan all of your backed up data only.

I do not like to use an additional program to combat something that should not be there from the start.

Also,

No matter hoe great the AV is, I just dont trust there updates on being in time. SOme of these nasty viruses come spawn out in the wild even before updates by AV vendors are even issued. Then its too late.

I agree that there is no best for antivirus, it's really personal preference.  In my opinion, if you're willing to pay the money, go for Norton, if you would rather go free, this site has got a lot of information on the various free solutions available, http://www.free-antivirus.ca

I use Norton on one of my computers and AVG on another, and I am perfectly happy with both of them.

I'm voting for NOD32. Had a client which got a virus that gobbled up Norton. Norton is also heavy on the resources.

NOD32 picked up the viruses that Norton couldn't stop before I had put on the latest update. We recently did an eval of escan which uses the kapersky engine. NOD32 scanned 30% more files with 20% less time, on the same PC.

The enterprise edition works well. I used to use Sophos but had a number of problems installing Sophos SBE on M$ SBS. Never resolved the problem so I chucked it out and put in NOD32. Sophos used MSDE and had issues installing on a PC which already had SQL.