[Gigs]

ok, i know a thread already exists for this topic, but i've started this to add a poll and see exactly which one is more popular among you fine experts...

from reading the threads here already, i can see that the most popular antivirus software is between Norton, McAfee, NOD32, and AVG... i personally have used Norton for as long as i can remember, but i am open to switching if i find a better one...

so, speaking purely about antivirus protection, what is your favorite program and recomendation?... try not to worry about price at all... imagine you had billions upon billion of dollars and could afford any software you wanted... which one would be your choice?

also assume that it's the lastest and best version of each product... for example, Norton's latest Professional edition... so the poll is to compare the latest and greatest of each of the 4 competitors....

[roban]

My favorites are not listed. They are Avast and Anti-Vir. Both freebies and excellent.

[pnbalaji]

Two of my favourites are below.

1. F-Prot for DOS (free) (www.f-prot.com or www.simtel.net)
2. smartcop freeware version (www.s-cop.com)

[Gigs]

thanks...

only 7 votes?... cmon people, what's your choice??

[Terryl]

I used Norton 2002 for 2 years and have no problem. However. I am looking at AVG to put on my daughter's laptop, will let you know how that goes.

[cheese]

NOD32

[rancid]

AntiVir!!

[Dark Star]

I've used Norton 2002 for the past two years and when my current subscription expires in Sept I'll start using AVG.... from all that I've read it's just as good as NAV, arguably better and you can't beat the price.

Norton 2002 has yet to find, block or quarrantine anything, it's there and hopefully, IF I should need it, it will work, maybe I'm lucky but from time to time I'll run an online scan just to be sure. Other than that NAV just sits in the systray and does it's 'live update' thing.

I've read high praises and "excellent" and all that but few if any will say "my XYZ brand A/V program is great because it has stopped 28 viri attempts or 14 or 7 or however many.

DS

[ianscotm]

I use norton 2004 and the only time it found something, 6 bad things that came along with a screensaver i downloaded, it could not delete them, i had to open up my hidden files and manually delete them, that's 0 for 6, used nav 2002 b4 on my dads pc but that never found anything. can't really vote as norton is all i've used and only cause it comes in the pc software bundle, i always read that mcafee has the edge on norton, my brother has an old pc (a whopping 64MB Ram) but has no av software, (he only uses adaware) he also has an adsl connection i keep telling him to see if theres any good av freeware out there, any suggestions? His pc is in for a health check at the moment, it would be interesting to see what they find, i'm sure he'll tell me tomorrow. all the signs are there, pop ups etc
ian

[Gigs]

hmm... very interesting... well thanks for all your opinions, i will take them all into consideration... mcafee is supposed to be good, but i've heard it's a resource hog... and if it's not THAT much better than norton, i think i would still prefer to use norton... norton has always had a pretty good reputation...

but AVG seems to be in the lead in the poll... i'll have to read up on how good that is...

[eddie5659]

Hiya

I use AVP:

http://www.avp.ch/

It updates daily, and works well for me, as in ease of use. Thing is, the new version has this stupid control panel, which takes a lot of rescources, so disabled in process manager.

Regards

eddie

[gotrootdude]

Trend Micro. AVG, etrust, or Panda.

Norton has a bad reputation in this forum. Would recommend anything besides Norton!

McAffee is just as bad..

Let's put it this way, if it's advertised in Reader's Digest and Golf Magazine, it's probably not the best to use...

[gotrootdude]

Forgot to say, you better check the date of your definition file if your useing Norton. I had a few people who's PC acted like they were updateing, saw the download and everything, and the date on the definition file never changed. No protection at all.

I don't know if they ever fixed Norton's uninstall programs, but it used to be a real pain in the ___ to get rid of it..

[Gigs]

ok, thanks for the advice... i checked my norton defintion files, and they are infact up to date, thank god... but i will look into some other virus scanners to see if they are better...

[HitAnyKey]

I've been using McAfee for about as long as I can remember. Right now I'm in the middle of my 5-year prepaid subscription for McAfee.com so will continue using it until my subscription ends. I've never had any problem with it, and the one time I got a virus (trojan) it gave me very clear instructions on how to remove it. Also I think that was a few years ago, even before I upgraded to the McAfee.com subscription which does it's definition file updates fully automated. (I think I had gone for a week that time without doing my update and as soon as I did the update, it detected the trojan).

I've also never had any problem with resources and McAfee being a hog. But that might also just be that I may not run too many applications which require massive amounts of resources, so whatever McAfee uses up doesn't affect anything I do.

My new Dell came with that free 90-day trial of Norton Security (av & firewall). I'm trying it for a tiny bit, since it's free right now, but will probably fully rip it out soon. I can't stand the Norton firewall portion of it, and I'll be putting my ZoneAlarm Pro on (which I already have a subscription to on my other computers).

My dad right now is trying out the ZoneAlarm AntiVirus (his Norton subscription had just ended), since it was only $5 more to include that in the package when we renewed ZoneAlarm last week to upgrade to the ZoneAlarm Security Suite. I'll let ya'll know what he thinks of that after a bit.