What is the BEST anti-virus program in your opinion?

I have 2 operating systems in my laptop (Win 2000 and XP)

I want to know which one is the best for Win 2000 and which one is best for XP.

I think the best should be terms of compatibility, good virus detection, and least system resource hog.

I don't know if it's the best or not, but I use and like AVG from http://www.grisoft.com.

For me it provides all the protection I need, it has automatic updating capabilites, and I can't really tell it's running.

Norton Anti-Virus wins awards constantly and is usually tested as the best overall anti-virus program.

McAfee VirusScan.




:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Anything other than it must be good. Run an online scan here (http://housecall.antivirus.com/) once a week, and you'll have better protection than McAfee. I have used McAfee along with occasional scans with that online thing. The scoreboard:

THE VIRUS GAMES
McAffe (installed locally, always running): 0/3 detected!
Online thing (online only, runs about once per week): 3/3 detected!

If it were not for the online thing I would have much less data on my hard drive... Also McAfee likes to disable itself. :confused: Maybe it is protecting me from itself!

My vote definitely goes for Norton! :)

I currently use NAV 2002 on my XP, and am satisfied with it, but sometimes it locks up or slows down my computer at start-up. Quite a lot of people at DellTalk have similar problems when using NAV 2002 and XP.

Norton Anti-Virus, by far. I've never had a virus infect my PC while using their products. It is always timely when it needs to be updated and downloading from their server is normally never slowed down. Only when a major virus hits does their download site slow down but that is expected. I've used McAfee at previous jobs and was constantly having problems with viruses getting through. Plus it seems as though their product had to be updated much more frequently.

Norton too. It's almost set and forget. Runs scehduled full scans during quiet hours, downloads virus updates automatically, etc.

Quality product. I would have been infected three times this week if it weren't for that program

Greg Moore

Originally posted by X-MAN
What is the BEST anti-virus program in your opinion?


My top 3:

Linux
Solaris
BSD

:D

AVG :D www.grisoft.com

Best scanner around (IMHO)

I personally use Norton 2002 on my 2 desktops and laptop, no complaints. I use the web based version of PC-Cillin (www.pc-cillin.com) to scan every now and then after Norton's full system scans just to have a "2nd opinion" so to speak.

Norton can be quite annoying when it does scans of email, file transfers etc :stickout

well you can shut off e-mail scanning, but in my opinion you'd be crazy if you did, given it's probably the major port of call for virus' these days.

It's been a while but I even got the infamous "I'm sending you this file for your attention" e-mail day before yesterday... I thought that was behind us now :)

Greg Moore

I still get those viruses via e-mail every once in awhile. I just got one the other day but I use Outlook and it deleted the file before it got to me. I then checked my wife's e-mail via the web and she had the same message. She doesn't even use the Internet, let alone clean out her e-mail often.

As for Norton, I allow it to scan incoming messages but I did turn off the outgoing scan. At times, the latest version would slow down my PC quite a bit just to scan simple one-line responses. Other than that, the product is great.

I tried using Norton, but it is like wrestling with a hot-air balloon. Very cumbersome. Plus they have too many auto-update problems that crashed (BSOD) my PC.

I also tried McAfee, but they didn't bring W2k support online quickly enough. So I also tried Trend Micro's anti-virus software, and I have stayed with it for over two years now.

It is very good, stays out of the way, and is not too expensive.

http://www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin/products/

My experience with Trend Micro was nothing short of mediocre. I previously worked for a major retail company at their world headquarters and they used Trend Micro. There were several times that the company was down for days while waiting for Trend to provide a fix to eliminate the specific virus. They were way behind in detecting the 'Melissa' and 'ILoveYou' viruses as that company was affected when those two hit. All the while, Norton had the fixes within the first day.

I'm not doubting that Trend has worked for you. I just wouldn't use them based on my experiences.

I used the command-line McAfee for a few years when it was the best detector, but have used Norton for about 5 years now.

I have never had a virus get thru yet, and I get plenty sent to me every week [eg about 5 so far this week].

Norton generally comes out on top in most of the reliable independent tests I read about.

Currently using desktop Win2000, with Norton set to auto-scan incoming email and to auto-update virus definitions. I haven't noticed any system degredation while using it.

Having said all that, you should read this piece from VMyths.com (http://vmyths.com/rant.cfm?id=242&page=4#skipcert) which suggests that the old "profile scanning" method of virus detection [today's is "signature scanning"] may make a comeback soon. Not a moment too soon IMO :)

I believe Norton Antivirus 2002 and Mcafee and the best ;)

We used to use McAfee VirusScan, but switched to Norton Antivirus 2002 recently. I personally felt that McAfee was slower than Norton on our workstations.

But I can recommend both programs.

Regards.

Originally posted by markblair
My experience with Trend Micro was nothing short of mediocre. I previously worked for a major retail company at their world headquarters and they used Trend Micro. There were several times that the company was down for days while waiting for Trend to provide a fix to eliminate the specific virus. They were way behind in detecting the 'Melissa' and 'ILoveYou' viruses as that company was affected when those two hit. All the while, Norton had the fixes within the first day...



That's odd. I use Symantec (Norton) antivirus at work and Trend Micro on my home PC. The updates are typically within a day of each other. With Trend-Micro's Love Bug update being received within 24 hours of the first notification of the virus. My sympathies go out for your former employer and their poor management of their computing infrastructure. Perhaps they should have gotten the level of service and support contract that was appropriate for the type of computer shop they were runnning.

Norton all the way,
they are the best at everything but disk defragmentation.


B.

Originally posted by Mike the newbie
That's odd. I use Symantec (Norton) antivirus at work and Trend Micro on my home PC. The updates are typically within a day of each other. With Trend-Micro's Love Bug update being received within 24 hours of the first notification of the virus. My sympathies go out for your former employer and their poor management of their computing infrastructure. Perhaps they should have gotten the level of service and support contract that was appropriate for the type of computer shop they were runnning.

I agree 100% with what you've stated. And it is possible that Trend has become a much better product. Of course the one that was used was the office suite so maybe it was slower on that end although I would think that would be faster or the same with updates.

As for the former employer, don't sympathize too much about them. They constantly made huge mistakes and they definitely needed a bigger package to support their environment. They had more than 10,000 PC's running this product just at their world headquaters. In case anyone is wondering, "they" are currently in huge financial trouble and going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Their CEO just recently left, although I would say he was more than likely fired. They are closing more than 280 of their stores and have over 20,000+ employees that will be jobless soon. I will withhold their name, however, since it is probably obvious who I'm speaking about.:rolleyes:

Not only should you have an anti-virus program (I highly recommend Norton Ant-Virus 2002) but you should have a firewall. The firewall that just came out w/ a great update is Zonealarm Pro 3.0! I suggest everybody pay the money for this firewall because nurmous times have people tried to hack my system but when I have this running it blocks them! It also protects against pop up ad's and cookies! Its a great product to have on all your computers!