Quote:
Originally Posted by enaberif  norton and zone alarm are crap! CRAP CRAP.
Kaspersky and NOD are great tho.
I don't use anything to be honest. No anti-virus or firewall.
I have a router and firefox and thats all I need; in fact its all ANYONE needs. |
While I agree that's all the COMPUTER SAVVY person needs, it's not all "anyone" needs. "Anyone" opens retarded spam e-mails in Outlook Express ... "Anyone" downloads and installs software that comes up via pop-ups (and don't tell me Firefox doesn't get pop-ups because it does, just less of them) ... "Anyone" goes to porn sites, warez sites, and other shady websites ... "Anyone" accepts infected files through MS Messenger ...
Active protection is generally not overly detrimental to the computing experience, but can save "Anyone's" ass when they do retarded shit online.
As for Norton, it's essentially useless. At least 90% of the computers we get in at my store with virus infections are running Norton. Symantec (Norton) gives us FREE software to use at work and we won't even touch it. It's a complete waste of time. We tried it once and ESET.com's free online scan did a better job of finding and removing viruses while being several times faster. For bad infections where the customer absolutely refuses a backup and reformat, we run Kaspersky w/ adjusted settings; it takes forever (we usually let it run overnight), but it gets the job done extremely well.
Bitdefender is okay. It has had more than its fair share of problems this year, though.
Zone Alarm has all the potential to be a great security suite; Kaspersky anti-virus engine, excellent firewall, and a decent anti-spyware engine. The only problem is that Check Point's software engineers can't seem to get them all to work together properly and the end result is a catastrophe. The software has so many reliability and compatibility issues, in my experience, that you should just stay clear of it.
Kaspersky is fantastic. It's easily the best security suite on the market. Just be aware that it does start to bog your startup time down over time, although they release new versions on a near-quarterly basis, so uninstalling the old version and installing the new version (while retaining the same license info) takes care of that issue while upgrading your protection level.
NOD32 is a great anti-virus, but their security suite is mediocre and completely defeats all that is good about NOD32, which is top-notch protection with nearly non-existant system impact. System impact is nearly as much as Kaspersky while the quality of the non-AV software (firewall, parental controls, etc.) is definitely inferior. The user interface is also not nearly as good nor is customer support. NOD32 vs. KAV is a toss-up, but KIS runs circles around ESET Smart Security.