Quake3World

what are (palin voice) ya'll using for antivirus software these days?


I may or may not have purchased my first pc. :-/

Avast.

Never ever ever ever ever use anything from Norton.

and before anyone says anything- I've looked at the T&T topics, I just want this shit up to date and I think my switch from mac to pc due to friends co-opting my style (and a broken ibook) is fairly significant news.

and when I say anti-virus, I'm talking everything; what do you use for firewall/spyware blocking and whatever other sort of scary shit that a new PC user could be vulnerable to.

avast

Symantec

Avast. The occasional manual sweep with Ad-Aware. Windows Firewall.

AVG 7.5 and Spybot S&D

EDIT: As well as Windows Defender and Windows Firewall.

Massive Quasars wrote:Symantec

No other for me. This is the one

AVG 7.5, windows Defender

Avast.

avira (i remember reading it's the best free one out there) - kaspersky labs one is the best one i think but u gotta pay.

for spyware i use adaware, malwarebytes antimalware, spybot search and destroy

for rootkits i use a-squared

Onecare or Avast.

I was running avast but I little while back I bought GameSafe from bitdefender

http://www.bitdefender.com/gamesafe

Well worth the money IMO. Its basically their Internet Defender 2008 product with a low-profile Game Mode you can turn on.

The reason I don't recommend Norton/Symantec is because I was stupid enough to buy it. I uninstalled it with over 270 days remaining. It is a massive resource hog that also impacts system start up/reboot times.

It's just the slowest, bloatiest clump of fagg0try I've ever seen.

Oh...I also recommend Ad-Aware, Defender, Hijack This and Windows Firewall.

I've also noticed that Spybot S&D is pretty useless after running an Ad-Aware scan. You probably don't really need it.

AVG, Spybot, and AdAware on my PC

Symantec on my Macbook -- but only because I don't have to pay for it.

I will echo that Norton is a bloated POS, that actually let me down by not dealing with the blaster worm a couple of years ago.
I know it's not realistic to expect 100% safety from an AV program, but that just stuck with me.
I'm quite happy with free AVG 8, although you want to avoid installing linkscanner and email scanner on setup, because they're unnecessary and cramp your style.

this is why I use avira antivir:

http://www.virusbtn.com/news/2008/09_02

also see

http://wiki.castlecops.com/AntiVirus_Comparison

beats out avast and avg

only thing is it's a pain in the ass to get it to run as simply a scanner on demand - you have to disable services and re-enable them or something. I hate running shit in background.

also - the virusbtn test was done with the premium suite for avira, which includes spyware/malware. The free edition just does viruses afaik.

Avast, ZoneAlarm, occasional Ad-Aware scan, Spybot Search and Destroy (though I practically never use it cause Ad-aware is better), CCleaner (which I run regularly [Edit: Not the registry bit though, usually I leave that alone.]).

My Symantec is light and unobtrusive, auto-updates and installs, schedule scans, etc. Clean spartan interface to boot.

There's a big difference between Norton (POS bloatware) and Symantec (which is actually pretty decent), so I wouldn't hit on Symantec just because both software is made by the same company. The only thing is, for most people Symantec isn't free, in which case something like Avast does a good enough job for free.

obsidian wrote:There's a big difference between Norton (POS bloatware) and Symantec (which is actually pretty decent),

Yeah they're very different apps. Symantec Endpoint Protection is the best of the lot in my opinion but it is costly.

NOD32 by ESET. it's quiet, easy on system resources, and if you look up best antivirus programs on google the comparisons always show NOD and Kaspersky antivirus (which is more resource-hungry) on top.

it's a brilliant program, i love it.

wow just looked it up - thanks am gonna switch

edit: ah it isn't free.

GONNAFISTYA wrote:It is a massive resource hog that also impacts system start up/reboot times.

It's just the slowest, bloatiest clump of fagg0try I've ever seen.

That's a lie, try F-Secure for the epic shit.
F-secure cant find ANYTHING unless you're viewing the same folder!
and it eats more Ram and CPU than having 3 Nortons running at the same time.

as for Antivirus, Im gonna suggest Avast. for epic scanner try Malwarebytes