What is the Best AntiVirus?
- Thread starter Twinkie
- Start date
mattblog
New Member
- Messages
- 463
- Reaction score
- 13
- Points
- 0
Personally i have been with many antivirus programs. I use avg now and i love it! I used to use Norton and Mcafee. Mcafee was good and alright but Norton (excuse my language) pissed the hell outa me. When it comes to avg, it has a great user interface, which is easily accesable and great tools which many have not been seen on many other antivirus programs. Not only that but it works. When surfing the web, avg has saved my life plenty of times by blocking bad websites. Definitatly a good program:wink:
Medora
New Member
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 0
I like Avira AntiVir, as it is a lightweight on resources, has an interface that's simple and makes logical sense, and has impressive detective rates. The only downside is the large advertisement that shows up after auto-update. If you can put up with that, it's worth it.
I've used McAfee, Norton, Symantec, AVG, Avast and TrendMicro and prefer Avast over the rest of them followed by Symantec. I haven't encountered an av program that is perfect, but with a anti-spyware/malware program Avast has been a solid shield for me for years. The worst I have used was McAfee followed very closely by Norton, though the Symantec Corporate edition seems alright humorously enough.
nandifamily
Member
- Messages
- 174
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 18
well, according to reviews avira and avast are rated higher than kaspersky. i personally prefer avira premium because of its detection rates.
PKamat
New Member
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 1
Asking which is the best antivirus software or best OS, etc. is like asking what's the best religion. Opinions differ with these things, just like brands. Anyway, AVG Free is the "Best AntiVirus" for me... serves it's purpose and it's free... What more could I want ? 
-Prasad.
-Prasad.
PKamat
New Member
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 1
I can see that it's Open Source!
I've never heard of it before, but since I'm only just using AVG Free anyway, I think I'll give it a shot. I'd rather use a software that's free and open source to begin with, rather than the free edition of a paid software...
Last edited:
webmastery97
New Member
- Messages
- 12
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
I use Panda Cloud Antivirus, it's a extremly LIGHTWEIGHT AV solution, also at my school they use PCA, it does't use internal resources at all because everything comes from the cloud.
I'm not sure what the best is, but I can say that McAfee's VirusScan Eneterprise 8.5 and 8.7 are truly terrible.
I'm a system's administrator at a site with 1800 users and 1100 workstations. This is what corporate tells us to use. When we have a huge virus outbreak (about 3x a year) we end up using free editions of AVG, Trend Micro, etc to clean viruses that McAfee doesn't even see. Then of course we uninstall them because we can't buy them, and they're not licensed for corporate use.
Just my .02
I'm a system's administrator at a site with 1800 users and 1100 workstations. This is what corporate tells us to use. When we have a huge virus outbreak (about 3x a year) we end up using free editions of AVG, Trend Micro, etc to clean viruses that McAfee doesn't even see. Then of course we uninstall them because we can't buy them, and they're not licensed for corporate use.
Just my .02
I have tried several (Norton, AVG {the free version only}, Kaspersky and some whose names I forget, or which I can't remember using much)
AVG was good. At the time I was using SpyBot to check the system regularly and between them I kept things under control.
Norton - I was a bit annoyed by the constant reminders/pleas to by other norton products (online space for backups etc). There was a couple of problems that crept through, and it was frustrating that these would often recur after a reboot - so it didn't feel like it was doing a terribly good job.
Kaspersky - has been my favourite (so it's odd that I'm about to be quite critical of it) (especially since they started sponsoring one of my sport teams). I get a little frustrated with the interface which is not always intuitive, and it can be difficult to find previous issues. There also seems to be a lot of 'noise' in some of the logs. It has found and fixed several problems, it has also tried to blacklist a windows process several times (Monitor.exe from memory - I confirmed the checksum was correct). Perhaps it's because my computer is getting old (about 6 years), and wasn't all that inmpressive to begin with, but I find it annoying that the whole computer freezes when Kaspersky is trying to do anything (I'd expect it for 'full scan', but database updates seem to really slow things up - so much so that I have scheduled them once a night).
I have noticed inconsistent behaviour interacting with Outlook - Specifically options to mark mail as spam or not spam seem to change and disappear. I suspect some of this might have had more to do with windows updates more than Kaspersky....
Some observations that annoy me with all antivirus software I have used:
AVG was good. At the time I was using SpyBot to check the system regularly and between them I kept things under control.
Norton - I was a bit annoyed by the constant reminders/pleas to by other norton products (online space for backups etc). There was a couple of problems that crept through, and it was frustrating that these would often recur after a reboot - so it didn't feel like it was doing a terribly good job.
Kaspersky - has been my favourite (so it's odd that I'm about to be quite critical of it) (especially since they started sponsoring one of my sport teams). I get a little frustrated with the interface which is not always intuitive, and it can be difficult to find previous issues. There also seems to be a lot of 'noise' in some of the logs. It has found and fixed several problems, it has also tried to blacklist a windows process several times (Monitor.exe from memory - I confirmed the checksum was correct). Perhaps it's because my computer is getting old (about 6 years), and wasn't all that inmpressive to begin with, but I find it annoying that the whole computer freezes when Kaspersky is trying to do anything (I'd expect it for 'full scan', but database updates seem to really slow things up - so much so that I have scheduled them once a night).
I have noticed inconsistent behaviour interacting with Outlook - Specifically options to mark mail as spam or not spam seem to change and disappear. I suspect some of this might have had more to do with windows updates more than Kaspersky....
Some observations that annoy me with all antivirus software I have used:
- Annoying messages with any activity
- Auto fix - While I think Auto fix is a wonderful idea, I have found most anti virual programs notify of an auto fix, but don't necessarily allow easy or intuitive undo functionality. It is also often difficult to change the AutoFix settings (which can be a good thing, but is frustrating nonetheless)
- Difficult interfaces - few anti virus sofware I have tried is intuitive, and they often seem to allow users a lot of control with poor explanations as to what they are controlling. This encourages people to configure using 'try and error' which is not ideal for AV products. Because I work in IT, people assume I can help with all of their computer issues, and I see too many friends who have tried to configure things (and messed up).
- Heavy processor usage - To a degree this is expected in AV software, but I find it frustrating that load times increase significantly, or the machine freezes when seemingly trivial tasks occur.
- Messages
- 2,928
- Reaction score
- 118
- Points
- 63
I've tried a few as well.
I started off using the free version of ZoneAlarm firewall, although that particular version has been obsoleted a few years ago so I won't give it any more mention.
After the free version stopped being supported, I upgraded to the paid version of ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite, and am still using it on around half of my computers. I found the menu system to be a bit obtuse at first (like, unblocking IRC meant going into IM Security, then Advanced, then Options, and then unchecking the box... a very non-obvious place to put that option), and I found that the scanning speed was rather slow and it detected a few false positives for programs that I used to use a lot (such as SmartMusic). For the false positives, I've found their customer support to be rather helpful as it was soon fixed. With a more recent update, their scanning speed has improved dramatically. My main gripe with ZoneAlarm still is their firewall -- I find that it tries to notify me of events too much on its maximum security level (which if you used it you would know that there are basically three levels, a low security level, a "learning mode" where it figures out what programs are good and bad for 21 days before switching up to max, and then maximum security). When on maximum security, it started warning me about things that it didn't care about it learning mode, even though I used them in learning mode a lot. These notices would frequently get in the way of what I was doing, so I just manually switch it back to learning mode every 21 days.
I've also used the paid version of AVG, which has an even dumber interface than ZoneAlarm from my experience. I still find it difficult to figure out where particular settings are located, and the menu for changing the more advanced settings is rather slow to update, refresh, etc. AVG also seems to have one of the worst scanning speeds I have ever encountered. Even if I set it on the quickest scan possible and set it to scan "infectable files only", it still takes a good 2 and a half hours to scan my 320 GB hard drive, of which only ~250 GB is being used -- and this is on a 32 bit machine with the max RAM that 32 bit machines can address. One thing I like about AVG is that it doesn't really get in the way with alerts and such, it just does its thing. The license period is also 2 years instead of 1 year, which is a nice perk too since it reduces the costs.
That said, I'm looking to try out Norton as a replacement for AVG, and possibly as a replacement for ZoneAlarm as well, as I've read some good reviews about it on Consumer Reports and elsewhere. I might post back with my experiences with Norton, but it's unlikely.
I started off using the free version of ZoneAlarm firewall, although that particular version has been obsoleted a few years ago so I won't give it any more mention.
After the free version stopped being supported, I upgraded to the paid version of ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite, and am still using it on around half of my computers. I found the menu system to be a bit obtuse at first (like, unblocking IRC meant going into IM Security, then Advanced, then Options, and then unchecking the box... a very non-obvious place to put that option), and I found that the scanning speed was rather slow and it detected a few false positives for programs that I used to use a lot (such as SmartMusic). For the false positives, I've found their customer support to be rather helpful as it was soon fixed. With a more recent update, their scanning speed has improved dramatically. My main gripe with ZoneAlarm still is their firewall -- I find that it tries to notify me of events too much on its maximum security level (which if you used it you would know that there are basically three levels, a low security level, a "learning mode" where it figures out what programs are good and bad for 21 days before switching up to max, and then maximum security). When on maximum security, it started warning me about things that it didn't care about it learning mode, even though I used them in learning mode a lot. These notices would frequently get in the way of what I was doing, so I just manually switch it back to learning mode every 21 days.
I've also used the paid version of AVG, which has an even dumber interface than ZoneAlarm from my experience. I still find it difficult to figure out where particular settings are located, and the menu for changing the more advanced settings is rather slow to update, refresh, etc. AVG also seems to have one of the worst scanning speeds I have ever encountered. Even if I set it on the quickest scan possible and set it to scan "infectable files only", it still takes a good 2 and a half hours to scan my 320 GB hard drive, of which only ~250 GB is being used -- and this is on a 32 bit machine with the max RAM that 32 bit machines can address. One thing I like about AVG is that it doesn't really get in the way with alerts and such, it just does its thing. The license period is also 2 years instead of 1 year, which is a nice perk too since it reduces the costs.
That said, I'm looking to try out Norton as a replacement for AVG, and possibly as a replacement for ZoneAlarm as well, as I've read some good reviews about it on Consumer Reports and elsewhere. I might post back with my experiences with Norton, but it's unlikely.
computerwis
New Member
- Messages
- 80
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 0
I like to use Kaspersky but PC Tools I like for my computer. It has more features.
mattblog
New Member
- Messages
- 463
- Reaction score
- 13
- Points
- 0
as i have recently stated, I do like avg for the user ablity and how it gets the job done with little to no effort. Thats not the main thing for me, for me its also that my less (and when is say less i meen suckish) techie family are able to use it. Even though they usually just let me do that stuff they dont really care if all my information goes down the drain because of a virus.
Regardless, i have now added a new scanning system which is also great when added on with AVG. Its like double protection and they don't have issues with each other
http://www.superantispyware.com/
I use the free version.
Regardless, i have now added a new scanning system which is also great when added on with AVG. Its like double protection and they don't have issues with each other
http://www.superantispyware.com/
I use the free version.
bhupendra2895
New Member
- Messages
- 554
- Reaction score
- 20
- Points
- 0
I love latest norton antivirus, it has very clean ui and works well on my system(1GB ram + 2.8 Dual core microprocesssor).
Sadly it has only 90 days trial.I am looking for some best free antivirus.I have tried avast and avg in past, but I am not satisfied with them.Avast sometimes shows false warnings, whereas avg takes too much system resources.
Sadly it has only 90 days trial.I am looking for some best free antivirus.I have tried avast and avg in past, but I am not satisfied with them.Avast sometimes shows false warnings, whereas avg takes too much system resources.
FreedomForAll
New Member
- Messages
- 31
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
Yeah. Norton is the way to go. Little resources, big protection. It's worth the $40 for antivirus, $60 for all-around protection.