PCWorld Virus stopper Showdown

[AkG]

"NOD32 has the best proactive protection by far, but its overall malware detection is second-tier, and it has an overly technical interface." WTF. Since when is nod32's interface overly technical? What do they want...one shiny red button and says "ID10T error please return computer to mfg'er" and thats it?

As for norton...norton was great back in the day but now...hell even Symantec Corp edition is just bloatware....15megs a WEEK for updates. Thats just insane.

I'll take a top notch Antivirus scanner and a top notch anti-malware/spyware combo over a "jack of all trades" single solution ANY day.

To me clamwin + Nod32 + avg antispyware + spywareblaster w/ once a week Spybot S&D scan + once a week Ad-aware SE scan ALL wrapped up behind a good hardware firewall is good enough...Ok maybe I usually also check all new programs I download out in a VMWare sandboxed version of XP first but thats just because I was trained to be paranoid.

AkG

[enaberif]

At home I don't run anything and will do a scan maybe every 6 months or so.

At work when I'm cleaning a customers machine I'll use Bit Defender for Virus/Spyware, Spybot S&D (tho 1.5 has a few bugs I don't like), and Spyware Terminator. After I have cleaned that all out I'll run CCleaner and after that go in and either turn off System Restore or change it from 2gb to 200mb.

[Babrbarossa]

I spent the last four months or so using Vista with absolutely no protection- not even Adaware- a sort of risky experiment....my father just gave me a free copy of norton last week and I felt obliged to use it- I'm a little annoyed with myself because I've vowed not to use it anymore as I hate the performance hit that it gives me- anyway- nothing has turned up in a full system scan (and my surfing habits aren't always the safest)-

[Jmac]

Norton won't show anything ... I had a computer in the other day running Norton (which said everything was fine) that had the background hijacked, the browser hijacked, pop-ups telling you to download some BS security software, etc. Obviously everything was not fine. Unfortunately, this is is not an uncommon sight for me working as a technician.

ESET online scanner found 73 infected objects, Adaware picked up another 6, and, finally, after advising the customer that she should ditch Norton for something better (Kaspersky, in this case), Kaspersky picked up another 3 (registry entries) for a combined total of 82 infected objects.

I really don't put much merit into any commercial reviews as they always put Norton amongst the best when I know it isn't, which makes me suspect that Symantec has had some influence on the test samples (or something worse).

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Jmac

Norton won't show anything ... I had a computer in the other day running Norton (which said everything was fine) that had the background hijacked, the browser hijacked, pop-ups telling you to download some BS security software, etc. Obviously everything was not fine. Unfortunately, this is is not an uncommon sight for me working as a technician.

ESET online scanner found 73 infected objects, Adaware picked up another 6, and, finally, after advising the customer that she should ditch Norton for something better (Kaspersky, in this case), Kaspersky picked up another 3 (registry entries) for a combined total of 82 infected objects.

I really don't put much merit into any commercial reviews as they always put Norton amongst the best when I know it isn't, which makes me suspect that Symantec has had some influence on the test samples (or something worse).

Amen! And customers wonder why as us technicians can spend a better part of a day doing virus removal!