What is the Best AntiVirus?

[Twinkie]

I have notice a lot of threads about which is the best anti virus software, so I decided to make a a poll for all people indecisive. I personally have done much research, and have found these three listed below to be the best. I have tried Avast, Nod32, Kaspersky, Norton and McAfee. For those who love Avast, be aware it generates tons of false positive and do not trust that anything labeled "Trojan-gen" is really a virus. However, in my opinion, the best for the money is BitDefender. Please vote on what you think is the best. For the integridy of this poll, please do not limit your answers to prices, rumors or limited experience. Please do not vote if you have not tried more than one AV. Consider the effectiveness of the scanner, how many features and the impact of system resources. A good AV must have a balance of each. I hope this will help those looking for a new AV. Thanks for voting!
1) Kaspersky - Was amazing in all aspects. (Requires some basic configuration)
2) BitDefender - Created some additional load on the PC, but with a good scanner.
3) Eset Nod32 - Was extreamly light on resources but not very good scanning engine.
(Great install and forget solution, has very good heuristics)

 

[mattura]

Yep, I'd mostly agree, although I don't know about BitDefender.

ps - it's Norton, not Nortorn

 

[firesteel]

I personally have done much research, and have found these three listed below to be the best. . .

I feel your research has overlooked one of the finest (if not the finest) antivirus applications, Avira Antivir. Avira's product has wickedly good virus, trojan, and worm detection and removal, rootkit detection and removal, and few, if any false positives. It also has a fast on demand scan engine and provides background scanning as well. Daily definition updates too. Resource usage is resonable with no detectable loss of productivity on my midrange laptop.

I've tried and used SNorton AV, Symantec Corporate AV (which is very good, unlike the Norton piece of tripe targeted for home users), Kasperski (excellent!), AVG, Avast!, Nod32, MacAfee, and CA, on both personal and corporate machines. At work, I have to use what is provided (Symantec Corp), but for my personal pc's, it's Avira Antivir Premium on everything. Their product just gets better and better with each version.

I'd rank AV's something like this:

#1 Kasperski AV (good, but expensive)
#1.5 Avira Antivir Premium
#2 Avira Antivir
#3 Symantec Corporate AV (not likely you'll get to play with this one, unless you encounter it at work)

Everything else I just lump together as "also rans", mostly due to short comings I felt I couldn't live with in an AV.

 

[alexandgruntz]

I prefer avast. It doesn't get in the way, and is pretty much a "set-and-forget" application - no popups urging you to upgrade to the paid edition. It only tells you that the virus definition has been updated, and tells you if there is a virus.

 

[Twinkie]

I feel your research has overlooked one of the finest (if not the finest) antivirus applications, Avira Antivir. Avira's product has wickedly good virus, trojan, and worm detection and removal, rootkit detection and removal, and few, if any false positives. It also has a fast on demand scan engine and provides background scanning as well. Daily definition updates too. Resource usage is resonable with no detectable loss of productivity on my midrange laptop.

I've tried and used SNorton AV, Symantec Corporate AV (which is very good, unlike the Norton piece of tripe targeted for home users), Kasperski (excellent!), AVG, Avast!, Nod32, MacAfee, and CA, on both personal and corporate machines. At work, I have to use what is provided (Symantec Corp), but for my personal pc's, it's Avira Antivir Premium on everything. Their product just gets better and better with each version.

I'd rank AV's something like this:

#1 Kasperski AV (good, but expensive)
#1.5 Avira Antivir Premium
#2 Avira Antivir
#3 Symantec Corporate AV (not likely you'll get to play with this one, unless you encounter it at work)

Everything else I just lump together as "also rans", mostly due to short comings I felt I couldn't live with in an AV.

I have heard about Avira in random places to be great, but not by anyone who gave substantial information and it is not popular enough to put on the polls with such limited space. I have heard that it has great detection. But, I have not tried it my self.

Norton is low ranked in my opinion because of the slow performance and because it does not detect the latest threats. They have a very bad outbreak response time, and is pretty much obsolete. In the old days, Norton and McAfee used to have the best protection, but not anymore. Kaspersky has great outbreak response time (1-2) hours and good performance.

 

[Dazz]

And Avast draws level lol.

For me its avast every time, its free, it does everything a good A/V should and its not a resource hog like Norton

 

[Twinkie]

And Avast draws level lol.

For me its avast every time, its free, it does everything a good A/V should and its not a resource hog like Norton

Your vote should not be limited to price. Have you ever tried another AV, preferably a purchased one?

 

[nterror]

Kaspersky is great. If you are concerned about performance, NOD32 seems to be the way to go, but Kaspersky is a close second.

I've heard good things about Avira Antivir but never actually tried it.

Hated the free ones...

 

[deathdroid]

I would have to go with AVG its very good and efficient and the free version comes with a lot of stuff like Anti spy ware anti root kits etc.

 

[Twinkie]

For some reason, BitDefender is not very popular, but has as good protection as Kaspersky and probably better than Nod32?

 

[Derek]

I have bitdefender I only paid $24.95 for 3 PC's and another $24.95 for CounterSpy for 2 PCS.

 

[techmagazine]

i prefer nod32

 

[infinity.ti]

I would go with a Norton (note : there is a mistake with the spelling given on the poll) installation, b'coz there is this gurantee that they will give you a 10 year complete support free of cost, if you can report any virus that their scanner cannot 'detect'.

 

[Smith6612]

I personally prefer Avast as my anti-virus program. I use it mainly because I don't pay for anti-virus and because it's light on memory usage (which is very important for me).

 

[Jon.Monreal]

I use AVG most of the time.

I have found AVG to be quite effective at detecting viruses, and that its memory footprint is reasonable compared to most other products, especially the Norton line of software (it has already been pointed out in this thead that Norton tends to be more bloated when it comes to the use of system resources).

Even the free version has a decent feature set (although lacking in some areas such as automation).

Also, as a plus, AVG antivirus is available for Linux, so I can use it to scan the Windows virtual machines on my workstation.

I should note that I have used most of the products in the poll before. However, I should also note that I take strong preventative measures, (a firewall that blocks all requests I don't approve, etc.) so I haven't really needed a heavy-duty antivirus program.

 

[Derek]

I like AVAST free but bitdefender is VERY good. I have it right now and it's a good price. The only thing about kaspersky is it slows up my start up and sometimes lags and it disconnects my internet same with nod32.

 

[hezuo]

I've got to transfer files from school, and public computers always have viruses (even though, they use Kapersky) I've tried Avast and Norton AV, but I think neither of them is good enough. However, after I installed Nod32, it always detects and cleans the viruses in my pendrive, that's why I believe this is the best AV.

 

[0010111]

ps - it's Norton, not Nortorn

lulz, "Nortorn". it's definitely torn alright. use freeware or open-source, for some reason the free stuff does better and uses less resources than expensive paid-for stuff. also, for spyware detector: SpyBot search and destroy.

 

[ADSMP]

I reckon Avast! Pro is really good. Very easy to use and picks up a lot of things that many Antiviruses don't. The bottom of the list is AVG though. It's terrible at picking up viruses!

 

[Twinkie]

I reckon Avast! Pro is really good. Very easy to use and picks up a lot of things that many Anti viruses don't. The bottom of the list is AVG though. It's terrible at picking up viruses!

Avsat probably is picking up those things as a false positives.

It is interesting how different peoples experiences are with Av's, especially Kaspersky. Kaspersky has a world of compatibility issues that cause it to malfunction (loss of internet, slow browsing, slow computer). Keep in mind that it is pretty fast when working right. The only thing that bugs me is that I had to get rid of all my other security software (comodo, spy sweeper) and I was forced to get the suite. But, that is with all major AVs.