best anti-virus???

[willhenderson]

what is the best free/maybe even not free, but good best efficient anti virus program to use?

something prefferably small in size/resources i'm going to be installing this into a friends pc, he's got normal anti vir by factory. it does scans on his pc then asks for money to correct errors. so im going to get him going with something decent.

[fLYtRap]

N O N E

I'm going without one since 2003 and I haven't got any viruses and I'm online pretty much 24/7.

[SanderMan]

I would say Active virus shield or AVG free. Both are free and light on resources although you'll get problems with actiive virus shield if u use newsgroups to download. Get them at http://www.activevirusshield.com/antivirus/freeav/index.adp and http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

[G)-(OST]

I use NOD32, look it up http://www.eset.com/

[mats.hogberg]

I use AVG Free on most boxes, but FSecure (with "Personal Firewall") on one, as my ISP gave me 1 year for free. Quite good too. Guess I'll go back to AVG Free when the free subscription ends.

/Mats

[normcar]

AVG Free is considered one of the best. Being free, updated almost every weekday, and using few system resources, it was my choice when I was reviewing the entire anti-v group about 2 years ago. I have been very happy with it.

[computeguy]

I use NOD32.. it rules!!!!

[jollyjohn]

Any. As long as it's not symantec.

[DereX888]

hands-down there is only one that works:
NOD32




(this is most important chart actually - only NOD32 have ZERO missed viruses)









DETAILS HERE

ANY QUESTIONS?

and no, I don't use it myself nor work for Eset even remotely

[CrayonEater]

My experience:

1. NOD32 (commercial)
2. Sophos Anti-Virus (commercial)
3. Avira Antivir (free for personal use)
4. AVG (free for personal use)
5. Kaspersky (free for personal use last time I checked, but slow)
6. Avast! (free for personal use)

With respect to anti-spyware software, as opposed to anti-virus, avoid anything you have to pay for, except Ewido (now AVG Anti-Spyware). The problem is that a lot of commercial anti-spyware (and, to a lesser extent, anti-virus) products either don't work, produce lots of false positives, or drop malware themselves.

[redwudz]

I wouldn't just depend on a antivirus program by itself. I have a hardware firewall, AVG free, Spyware Blaster, Spybot, Sygate firewall, and Stopzilla. They all work fine together and each one has it's own job to do. How much protection you need really depends a lot on where you go on the net and what you download.

I tend to see a lot more trojans, adware and spyware than I do viruses these days. You may need more protection than just a antivirus program can provide.

[Bjs]

DereX888 take no notice of that virus bulletin ... it is completely bias .

For such to declare one over another , and to be fair , it must include ALL products available ...

In all my test's in the last 3 year's , avg still out guns all other products ... and none of my customer's have had any further issue's .

[jimmalenko]

I like AVG Free.

[MOVIEGEEK]

I like Avast Free,it silently updates and the web shield works great.

[dphirschler]

I have been using AVG Free for over a year. I've been very happy with it. I haven't tried Avast.


Darryl

[kicko]

NOD 32 is great and it runs so much lighter on your resources

[Marvingj]

Norton has been decent to me.

[MJA]

for high risk users kaspersky is the best

[ntscuser]

AVG Free. Always up-to-date and fewer clashes with other installations.

[InXess]

Norton and AVG but NOD32 looks most impressive.

[Des]

I used to like EZ Anti-virus by Computer Associates but over the summer I noticed the latest incarnation of it was missing things.

I have since switched to Comodo Antivirus which has found many things that (none too serious) that EZ had missed.

Comodo's real time engine also seems to be less taxing on the system than some others.

http://antivirus.comodo.com/

Good Luck.

--dES

[ViRaL1]

MacOS? :P

[DereX888]

MacOS? :P

Its a joke, right?
Not everyone likes to use a niche OS to be installed on a proprietary machine only, which doesnt even support most of the hardware out there; not to mention the software.
If you suggest Mac, why not Unix? :P Is it because there's no uPods? (unix gaypod :P :P )
After all you do know Unix is far more stable and better than MacOS, right?

[thespook]

Just wondered if anyone is using or tried BitDefender and what there thoughts were about it, I just installed the 30 day evaluation and it seems fine at the moment.

[stiltman]

While it doesn't include AVG or TrendMicro. TrendMicro being a growing corporate standard, C|NET just did a review

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6600_7-6655968-1.html?tag=nefd.aof

[laspis59]

Although from looking at the charts it doesn't seem to be as good as others,I have been using Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security and couldn't be happier with it.The components are updated at least every day but usually 2-3 times a day.When using it a few years back the updated components were only available for downloading every 3 days.They have definitely improved it.It has caught every virus so far and I pray it continues to catch them if click on a bad link,unaware that the site is bad or software contains spyware/virus.Its downside is that it seems to use up a lot of memory and you have to pay each year.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Trend_Micro_PC_cillin_Internet_Security_2006/4505-3667_7-31604253.html

I use it in conjuction with Ad-Aware,Spybot S&D and BlackLight Rootkit Scanner.

...but I think I'll be checking out NOD32 because my license for PC-Cillin is about due for renewal and it seems that its the best out there.

[laspis59]

I need to update the information regarding my previous post.I have tried the newer Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2007 and I totally do not recommend it.I have left a review as to why I dont here:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Trend_Micro_PCCillin_Internet_Security_2007/1062089159/1

I'm registered as "Luke1980"

I'm sure most people that have read this thread have noticed that AVG AntiVirus seems to be very popular and reliable but because I mentioned PC-Cillin,I thought that some readers may need to know about its current problem.I dont want to make anyone think its half decent when it isn't anymore.As you can see from the reviews,the older version is OK to a certain extent.

Trend Micro DID improve it but have now blown it completely and I'll never pay them again.AVG here I come.Not too sure about NOD32 at the moment.

Btw,although most AV software isn't really good for spyware scanning,I used this newer 2007 version and it is one of the worst spyware scanners I've used.It flags decent tools that are used by most members on this site as spyware!

[stiltman]

I need to update the information regarding my previous post.I have tried the newer Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2007 and I totally do not recommend it.I have left a review as to why I dont here:

Out of the box with all it's defualts running, it's the worst I've seen....after some tweaking of the settings, it marginal but not great.

[laspis59]

Out of the box with all it's defualts running, it's the worst I've seen....after some tweaking of the settings, it marginal but not great.

I 100% agree its not all that good.The default settings leave most security features turned off and manual scanning needs adjusting to scan compressed files ect... Its bloated with v2006 but with v2007 its twice as bloated,twice as slow and uses twice as much memory.

I suppose because I have used this software for so long,I just got used to it and never really looked into which AV software is light on system resoures and reliable.It has saved my OS from infection but I suppose its because I mostly tend to visit sites I know,this site being my favorite and avoid visiting dodgy download sites or others.You can easily visit a bad site unaware and get infected with Scumware,so I do want a reliable firewall and AntiVirus+AntiSpyware maybe with HIPS.

I still have v2006 installed but when I install my new hard drive I think I'll try the AVG products,spyware scanner and antivirus.Because of this buggy problem with the newer release,it has made me look into antivirus software a lot more and most reviews seem to recommend AVG AntiVirus so I assume its much,much better than PC-Cillin.

[Timoleon]

The folks at Redmond use NOD32 internally.