Poll: Best Antivirus

[infohippie]

Microsoft Security Essentials, combined with being a little bit circumspect about what you click on. No antivirus can substitute for taking a little care with your browsing.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I use Norton 360. Not by any choice I'm just on a relatives family plan or something and get it for free (for now).
I'm pretty savvy about my internetting so I don't think I;ve ever gotten a virus on my machine and its also stopped like 3 intrusion attempts so yay!

However when a virus does slip through it fucks shit up. I got one on my aunts computer while browsing a Halo wiki page and it blew right through all the protections and started to destroy my aunts computer. Norton could do nothing but weep at the virus' laughter.

I have a shitty laptop and it doesn't run all that slow with Norton, hell Google Chrome eats up more memory and processor power than Norton does.

 

[Hap2]

AVG combined with Firefox Ghostery and Adblocker (the latter I turn on only on sites with annoying popups that slip past the firewall, and turn off on sites that I support). I put the PC in administrator mode every few weeks or so and clean it up with Spybot and Malwarebytes. Keeps things fairly clean, though Firefox has become something of a resource hog.

 

[Rocket Taco]

Once upon a time I used Avira, but then it let a worm in that started infecting executables. When Avira detected it, it proceeded to quarantine every infected executable without asking - including critical system services, thus borking my computer. Then I switched to AVG, but it wasn't exactly an airtight shield, let a lot of stuff in. After using my dad's gaming rig with ZoneAlarm, I was really tired of being assaulted with dialog boxes asking the same questions over and over, and the massive slowdowns in loading as it scanned literally everything. Now I use Avast on two machines, which hasn't let a virus in in the last 4+ years, doesn't slow things down in the slightest, asks me what to do when it makes a detection, and doesn't bug me about anything else.

As for Norton/McAfee/Defender, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no.

So Avast is really the only one there that hasn't screwed me over yet.

 

[MorphingDragon]

As someone who does Cyber Security "research", the best anti virus is you. I don't even mean that is a sappy 80s power movie way. Pick any of the free ones, no anti virus can protect you from yourself.

Though in IT, Nod32 or WebRoot or Symantec are to goto pieces of software. I use COMODO Internet Security Free on my machine at home.

 

[Sandernista]

If I was going to pay for something, then I would probably go with Nod32. And so on. What criteria are we applying here?

This man knows what he's talking about. Nod32 is the best in protection software.

 

[New Troll]

Best Protection Over-all = Norton 360
Best Protection/ Performance = McAfee Anti-virus
Best Little Resource Abuse = AVG
Best Free Protection = Avast! (though I admit I haven't tried them all)

Personally I would normally go with whichever anti-virus or internet security came with the computer. Just renew the Norton or McAfee after the trial period was up. But since I have four computers in my house now it's just so much cheaper to get Norton 360 which you can use on three machines. Baby-sitter/ children's computer uses Avast! since I really don't care if anything happens to it.

Also, I've never personally had any issue but I get more complaints from customers concerning Kaspersky than every other AV/IS software put together. Everything from it not catching important issues to it making customer's PCs completely unusable.

 

[Dreadman75]

Hmmm...Does no one here use Bitdefender? That's my anti-virus of choice. Plenty of different services from standard anti-virus, firewall, and anti-spam. But it can also encrypt files and help optimize my computer. It's a shame the interface is kinda awkward. But all in all I get a lot for what I paid for it.

 

[GlorySeeker]

I use Microsoft Security Essentials. Its free, first and foremost. And Ive yet to have a Virus it hasnt contained, then asked me to remove. Its really unintrusive (Like Mcafee telling me to scan and update etc etc). I really like it. Its simple, and it works.

 

[Serinanth]

Charter cable gives out a free licenses for their security suit, it uses F-secure. I am typically a fairy paranoid user and usually catch even the best of phishing emails. It has caught and cleaned a few nasties for me over the years but I wonder what its missing at times as the scans on my computers almost always come up clean.

Has anyone else heard of F-secure or have any opinions of their software?

 

[MorganL4]

Best how? Kaspersky is quite thorough, but also very heavy duty - I wouldn't want it on my PC because it would take up too much resources. I'm using Avast! at the moment and that's OK, as it's free. If I was going to pay for something, then I would probably go with Nod32. And so on. What criteria are we applying here?

Define Heavy.... I have it running on my PC as we speak, If you combine Kaspersky and Malwarebytes (Which I use in tandem) it is still taking up only 5MB of RAM..... (Steam and Firefox are taking up the lions share.... its at 32% out of 8 gig)

As far as my processor is concerned..... I have one core at 5% and the other three are fluctuating between 2% and 0%....

So I wouldn't call it a resource hog, considering my PC is 5 years old now....


Granted... When it is doing a full scan it is a REAL hog, but that only takes about 4 hours, and I do it every three days.... It runs while I'm at work, and I don't care how slow my computer is when I am not using it...

 

[Denamic]

Norton/Symantec stuff is ridiculously resource heavy, and I don't see the point of anything else you have to pay for.

My Norton is using 5 MB of memory right now, which is barely on the radar, as far as I'm concerned. Not really resource heavy since the 2009 version revamp, and Norton has saved my hide on more than one occasion.

And this is a recommendation from someone who used to swear Norton was in league with the devil, due to aforementioned resource-use issues.

How many MB of RAM a program takes is a terrible way of measuring how much resources it takes. In fact, it isn't a method of measuring performance at all. It's easy to force purge shit into the swap file, reducing the RAM footprint. But that is anything but a performance boost. RAM is fucking fast. HDDs aren't. Even SSDs doesn't hold a candle to it. You get the best possible performance when programs run entirely in RAM. Empty RAM is useless RAM. As long as there's a buffer zone for new programs, it's generally best to use up as much RAM as possible instead of using the swap, which laypersons tend to perceive as bad. "This program takes up 300MB of RAM! Such bloatware!" etc.
Anyway, point is, never use RAM usage for measuring performance. For anything.

For measuring AV software, it would be the added memory bandwidth usage and CPU load during certain operations. An internet traffic monitoring tool may not be noticeable at low speeds, but easily could choke up your computer when you're transferring at some 10MB/s, despite being under at under 10MB RAM usage. That's not good if you've got a 100Mbit connection, or are transferring things through a LAN connection.

 

[Agayek]

Microsoft Security Essentials is really all you need for a Windows anti-virus program. With that and halfway intelligent web surfing, you can avoid any and all virus.

 

[MorganL4]

Microsoft Security Essentials is really all you need for a Windows anti-virus program. With that and halfway intelligent web surfing, you can avoid any and all virus.

Dude.... Most people have no clue what is okay to view and what is not.... I have had to learn that the hard way, I used to believe that same thing, Until I found myself having practically a part time job of family virus removal man, because the rest of my family don't know their left from their right on the web.... While you and I would be fine with Malwarebytes and MSE.... Most would certainly not be. I do have Kaspersky on my system right now, but that is only because I had an extra license, and I figured: Why let it go to waist?

 

[Agayek]

Dude.... Most people have no clue what is okay to view and what is not.... I have had to learn that the hard way, I used to believe that same thing, Until I found myself having practically a part time job of family virus removal man, because the rest of my family don't know their left from their right on the web.... While you and I would be fine with Malwarebytes and MSE.... Most would certainly not be. I do have Kaspersky on my system right now, but that is only because I had an extra license, and I figured: Why let it go to waist?

True enough.

The way I see it though, the burned hand teaches best. Maybe next time they'll stop to think before clicking on the link to GROW UR PENIZ RIGHT NAOW! or whatever

 

[not_you]

I use Trend Micro...

Always have... Probably always will...
I know a lot of people say it's resource heavy, but, considering the (two) computers I have run it on, I don't notice the thing...
(1st gen Laptop i7, and FX8350)

But yeah, it does it's job... tells me every months how many things it's stopped... And I haven't ever had a virus... Granted, I know better than to click on the links in emails that say I've on $850,000 as long as I follow this "link"

 

[Valkrex]

I use Norton. People talk shit about it ALL THE FUCKING TIME but I have NEVER had any issues with it. It constantly updates itself, runs background scans when I'm not doing much on my computer, is very thorough in its exams, comes with a root-kit detector/deleter, and I have never had a virus get past its firewall. Ever. Malware and spyware detection and removal is built in as well. It has everything I ask for in anti-virus software.

As for the complaint about it being a resource hog... no not on my machine. Runs fine, doesn't have any noticeable effect on my performance.

So yea, Norton and common sense online. Never had a virus.

 

[chazwicked82]

Since I found avast 5 years ago that's all I've used, it's free and catches most things so I'm happy with it.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

AVAST, mateys!

never let me down!

 

[piinyouri]

Used AVG for quite some time and was fairly happy with it. After a point though it started to become bloated and unnecessarily convoluted, so I dropped it and picked up Avast and I've been pleased with it since switching.
I also have MalwareBytes and SpyBot just for active scans.