Which Anti Virus/Internet Security Suite ?

[RB]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for some advice on which AV/I Security Suite people recommend.
In the process of upgrading my systems ATM and what to try some of the other offerings out there (I've been using Norton's for a few years). :rolleyes:

Any suggestions most appreciated.

I've heard Zone Alarm and Kaspersky are good and one review recommends Norton's 360 but I don't really want to go back to Norton's. :whistle:

Thanks in advance.

[h0ughy]

I find AVG is a nice solid suite plus it has a free antivirus and antispam if needed

[Terry B]

I use Vet. Seems OK

[vash]

I use avg free too not much of a resource hog and it does a good job.
AS for a firewall I have a router and that does as a good a job as any firewall.

[RB]

Thanks guys, I'll check out AVG.
I didn't realise VET was still around although now it looks like it goes under the name CA.

[acropolite]

If you're willing to pay you can't go past NOD32. It wins every comparitive shootout and treads very lightly on resources. The Australian support is excellent. I use AVG at home but Nod32 at work. I'm with vash re the router, I have used router firewalls at home and work with no problems for many years.

[Ric]

I use Vet on the desktop and Nortons on the lappy and I'm happy with both of them.

Cheers

[OneOfOne]

I have Norton 360 on my computer at home, and although it seems to do a good job (but then again my wife's teenage daughter doesn't even know I have wireless internet on my computer and laptop) it seems to hog CPU time at times. I can be using the computer and all of a sudden it gets noticably slower. If I look at TaskManager, Nortons is chewing up the CPU and thrashing the disk. It is, however, quite easy to use.

If I was choosing again, I might go for something else that does not get so greedy.

Problem with all this virus stuff is that eventually a scan will take a full 24 hours! So you will have to allocate one of the CPUs to do a continuous scan...it will be a sad day:(

[mrsnipey]

Another for Nod32.

[Zuts]

Hi,

I have been using AVG free for years and it works for me. It is light on resources and scans your emails as they come in.

That combined with a natted router will act as a firewall and protect you from the internet worms which wont see your pc as it has a local net IP.

If you decide to open up some ports on the router, say to run a web server or to access your pc from work then most routers these days also have a firewall capability.

Paul

[RB]

Yes I've only heard good things about NOD32.
I've been waiting for my Norton's subscription to expire so I could change over to something else.

So is the Router sufficient as a firewall?
I've only got it in default mode, firewall is 'on', do I need to get in there and set up a specific configuration?


I've read that 360 is a better version than previous Norton's but still quite CPU intensive.
Now that I've done a clean install on my lappy I want to do some free trial periods of the various suites on offer and see how we go.


Cheers Paul.

Thanks guys
:thumbsup:

[Glenhuon]

My nod goes to AVG with Firewall, reasonably priced and hardly notice its there working away in the background. Dumped Norton a couple of years back, only one that ever let 2 viruses through and couldn't clean them without a vist to the Symantec website. I believe the latest one is still a resource hog, and darn difficult to remove. Leaves bits of itself all over the system. Spyware is taken care of by Spyware Doctor from PCtools, IMO the best of the bunch.

Bill

[g__day]

I know a major Bank did a review and selected Zone Alarms Pro as by far the best.

[Zuts]

Hi RB,

As long as your router is set up as DHCP server and gives you a local address (usually in range 192.168.x.y) then this is the only firewall you need. This is because anyone outside your network just cant see your machine. They can attack your router via its external IP maybe but generally this is fruitless.

You still need anti virus as you can still download bad stuff or click on a bad email and so on.

If however you need to set up services and use ip forwarding to allow connections from the outside world then you would generally turn the firewall facility on the router on.

This does not include the usual ports (80, 443) which are always open and forwarded to your local ip as otherwise you could not browse the internet.

Regards Paul

[GTB_an_Owl]

sent you a Pm Andrew

geoff

[RB]

Just an update:

I've decided to use the new Nod32 ESET AV suite and am very happy with it's performance, I've been using it now for well over a month.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, I also tried ZoneAlarms Pro which was excellent too but I preferred Nod ESET.

Easy to setup and unobtrusive and doesn't seem to be bloatware.
Great anti-spam filtering and top notch firewall.
I actually ended up buying it through a dealer here on IIS.

Also found a link to enable me to completely remove my old installation of Norton's.
If anyone ever wants to remove Norton's completely, visit and follow the instructions:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

[OneOfOne]

A couple of days ago I just needed to check a few things on the net and everytime I wanted to click on something, Nortons seemed to send the hard drive into a frenzy. Usually about 5 minutes or so after I start the computer up, the hard drive goes crazy for several minutes. Looking at task manager I see the only thread making masses of disk accesses is one of the norton systems. Eventually I gave up trying to do my searches and decided instead to download AVG and to update my Ad-Aware. On Saturday, I spent some time removing Nortons (it really didn't want to go!) and found AutoUpdate was still there and refused to uninstall, so I followed the link in an earlier posting in this thread.

Well, my computer is much more usable today (Sunday) and searches run at the sort of speed I would expect from cable.

[Dooghan]

Has anyone used Blink http://www.eeye.com/html/products/blink/index.htm (http://www.eeye.com/html/products/blink/index.html)

Looks like an interesting program that has a firewall, AV, spyware scanner and zero day attack protection. I'm interested in seeing if anyone has used it and is it any good?

[acropolite]

An additional point with Nod32, it can be set up as a multi user, so if you have 2 or more machines, one can be used to distribute the downloaded updates to the others.

[shane shaw]

CA Internet Security Suite

this is the old Vet anti virus software. I have used it for many years and never had a problem. I had previously used nortons and had heaps of problems.,

[edwardsdj]

Free AVG is absolutely free and I've been using it for over 5 years now. It is far better than any paid for one I've used. I've tried Norton once but it kept crashing on me so I went back to AVG.

Windows XP/Vista has built-in firewall. Combined with router NAT and firewall this is all you need.

There is no need to pay to get an anti-virus/firewall solution.

[Ian Robinson]

I use Sophos Antivirus , but only because it comes a free full service download (35Mb) for all students at my uni.

I download and reinstall every 6 months and it updates automatically.

I also run Spybot once a month , I install it for that purpose and get rid of if it afterwards (it interfers with things) and I run Ad-Aware V6 regularly (daily).

Worth defraging regularly too.

I've not had an infection on my laptop or my desktop for several years .... touch wood !!!

[Maverick]

Hi guys,
Free antivirus like AVG combined with free antispyware Spybot or SuperAntiSpyware and Windows Firewall or if you want to pay $99, Trend Micro PcCilin Internet Security for 3 PC's and 1 year protection.

Hope this helped you

[gman]

I used to run Norton.
It is a resource eater as previously mentioned.:(

Switched to Trend Micro - Can run on 3 PC's with the one licence.
Purchase 2 years of licence and they also sent me a USB HDTV dongle with software - was a good deal at the time.:thumbsup:

Also use "CCleaner" & "Defraggler" from Piriform. (they are freebies) and help with keeping the PC relativley clean:thumbsup:
Also use "EasyCleaner" from Toniarts (also a freebie) every now and then - but beware as this will do what you ask - make sure you make a backup just in case:scared:

[Nifty]

I use CA Security Centre (They call it Center)
Works well. It has a backup feature and web site inspector as well as the usual stuff.
Have a look at their website
Cheers
Nev

[Glenhuon]

AVG have just released V8 freeby, includes an anti spyware scanner. looks pretty good.

Bill

[iceman]

I just rebuilt a system at home, i'll go AVG after the many recommendations here.

I had Norton on my old PC and it was a nightmare to try and turn off. Most horrible program ever.

[GTB_an_Owl]

SHAME on you Mike :whistle:

just to appease me - please put "Spybot" on it

geoff

[iceman]

Yeh I use Spybot SD on my work laptop. I'll put it on at home.

What's the difference between AVG 8.0 (http://www.avg.com.au/index.cfm?section=avg&action=pages%2f500000) and AVG Free (http://free.grisoft.com/)?

(apart from one costing $70 for 2 years and the other being free)

[MrB]

For more than ten years I only used antivirus programs to do checkups then un-installed them and in all that time I think I've only had two or three pretty harmless viruses. I've just always been very careful what I download and where I go, have never used IE and wouldn't touch Outlook with your 10foot bargepole. Always used a firewall tho.

Anyway, now that my father is learning to use my computer, all hell broke loose! Installed AVG a few months back and it is pretty good but Start-up is now much longer then it used to be, but once started there's no noticeable difference, except ofcourse for the friggin' annoying dial-up dialogue that pops-up every 5 mins when offline.

[astropolak]

No one mentioned Kaspersky, IMHO the best one of the lot mentioned here. I agree with Mike - Norton is just about the ugliest piece of software, just to think they years ago were making such brilliant utilities....

Joe

[Starkler]

I got a popup telling me I must upgrade my AVG to continue getting updates.
I have read rumblings that certain circumstances ( i think accessing yahoo mail) cause it to use heaps of cpu. Must investigate further.

[Glenhuon]

If you have the paid version (AVG + Firewall in my case) and get a popup saying you can upgrade for free as you are still registered. Don't.
Both myself and one other (an IT proff at that) took the option and had intermittent boot problems after it attempted to update its database.
Seems it installs but doesn't upgrade the software key.
There is a place on the Grisoft website where you can request an updated software key (don't fall for the "cross my palm with $16.40" bit. If your currently paid up there is another link for a free one)
Uninstall v7.5 and reinstall V8 with new key.

No problems since.

Bill

[Glenhuon]

Not a huge amount really. No manufacturers support for the free version apart from database upgrades. Not sure how long the auto updates last after install with the new version. With the earlier spyware program, you had to manually update after 30days, but the AV program gave auto updates all the time.
Haven't heard any reports of problems with Yahoo mail so far, actually just been told it speeds up the downloads.
You can set the CPU priority allowed to AVG when it scans, might have it set too high.

Bill

[edwardsdj]

Hi All,

According to a splash screen that came up when downloading my Free AVG virus database update the other day:

FREE AVG UPDATES WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE FROM THE END OF MAY.

As I said before, I've used this product for about five years and it has been great. I cannot support it if it is not free though.

In the five years I've used it not a single virus has been detected on my system. Personally, I'm going to uninstall this immeditely. My apologies to anyone that may have installed this after reading my comments on this thread.

Take care,
Doug

[bindibadgi]

AVG 8 Free is out now, and I've been using it for a couple of weeks. It loses a couple of things (like rootkit) but still seems to be pretty good.

Just be careful if you have a low download limit. There's a nice little feature of AVG 8 which is on by default and it scans all links in any page (eg Google!!). It ate through 600MB in a couple of days for me before I switched it off.

[edwardsdj]

Thanks bindibadgi (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/member.php?u=4842),

Maybe I spoke too soon. I'll checkout out Free AVG 8.

Take care,
Doug

[wasyoungonce]

AVG 8 has become a resource hog...like Nortons.

Avoid it. I have been using AVG 7.5 for quite awhile and it was ok but the ver 8.0 will slow your system. I had it on a few different systems from dual core Opteron's to core 2 duos and they all slow quite a bit.

I've now moved on to avast free home edition..works very smoothly and doesn't hog system resources. System speed up is quite a bit.

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

Of course also use Spybot and a fire wall.

[Computer Guru]

I like Norton because it works automatically in the background downloading updates and all that stuff in the background,plus it comes with a free 90 day subscription on all acer computers.