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What's the best antivirus?
Jean
Heartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered User regular
Heartbroken papa bearGatineau, QuébecRegistered User regular
So I just bought a new computer, and the last touch I need to add is an antivirus. What are the good ones, which ones should I avoid?
"You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
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It has an annoying ad every time it updates, though. It can be removed by completely denying access to the file avnotify.exe.
If you want free look at Comodo or Avast.
Avoid Norton. AVG isn't bad but there is better.
I'd stay away from AVG. They've gotten pretty crappy recently.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
EDIT in fact the best antivirus is just not visiting websites or downloading programs that are likely to give you a virus
Also, you know, an antivirus program.
While this is always a sound idea, and should be followed, the days of safe surfing being the only line of defense necessary are over. Again, always be safe when browsing (and scriptblock), but be aware that other threats are out there. Malvertisements show up on perfectly legitimate webpages, and don't need any compromise or hack of that webpage to infest them (National geographic, Newsweek, etc. have been hit by them). The newest worms can infect an unupdated computer without you so much as opening a webbrowser. It's getting harder and harder to discern what's a 'website likely to give you a virus'. Potent example: Last week there was a tragedy at the campus where I work. Within 24 hours, the top google hit when searching for the victim's name was a website designed to look legit, but downloaded trojans if you visited it.
Anyhow, I cast my lot with Nod32. Nothing is perfect, but Nod scores pretty high in the effectiveness department.
Spot on. Any activex protocol without an updated, good Anti-Virus(Comdo, BitDefender, Kaspersky, etc) and that's all it take's to get an infection. That's all it takes to get mywebsearch or a rogue security program, and they can be a major pain.
Not to say I don't disagree with the guy originally, I run without an Anti-Virus and I just know how my computer is supposed to work, and if something does happen to show up, I catch it early before it's gotten too much of a hold on the computer. But that requires being a little more tech savvy.
Anyway, yes, anti-virus is good. BitDefender, Comodo, and Kaspersky if you want to pay. AVG was and to an extent still is a good program, but it has it's issues - I've restored over 15 computers in the past month because of OS issues it's caused.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
Avast! if you don't.
I've had good luck with Avast!.
i'll pay if it means than I'll be getting a significantly superior protection. I wont risk infecting my computer to save $30 or so.
Which is a shame, because I'd gotten really comfortable with AVG 7. I really liked Avast! before that, but frankly, something about the interface pisses me off. Can anyone recommend something in that vein, but with a different interface? Or maybe a version of Avast! that looks like 90% of other AV programs?
[/heresy]
The interface in Avast main program is bad, but I had to start it to remember how it looked. After using Avast for 3 years I think I have opened the main program twice. How it integrates into windows is pretty good though.
I too, throw in an Avast! vote. You may also find it useful to visit sites like VirusTotal for scanning files less than 10MB with almost all of the AV products available today.
Man, my PC at work got fucked up bad when I clicked a google link that took me to national geographic and downloaded some .pdf (not letting people know the link they click is a .pdf should be punishable by death)
Symantec End Point has done nothing in protecting my computer from whatever I got.
Take a look at PC Tools' free AV. http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/
I've used stuff from PC Tools before, but never their AV. Is it any good?
I've never had any trouble with it. It seems to be a good AV. I don't think it's been compared to others in tests yet.
Double lime for Eset NOD32.
I had a free trial for NOD32, and I must say, I love the interface (and found everything else to be quite up-to-snuff as well).
I just can't bring myself to pay $60 for one year. If it was half that, I'd consider it. I'm a cheap bastard, I know. Especially when there are free alternatives that, while not as good, can still do the job. I don't regularly throw my PC into a diseased cesspool and fish it back out.
NOD32 is $40/year ($60/2 years.) Smart Security is $60/year, and I think the only added benefit over NOD32 is a firewall. Don't hold me to that as I have not used Smart Security.
If it makes you feel better, your $40 goes to good use. ESET works around the clock. You will get updates every few hours, not days.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
I remember that from the free trial. Two years IS $60 ($40 for one year, I must have misread). It's hard to overcome that sort of cheap bastard instinct (especially since I'm not working right now, and going back to being a full-time student).
Buh? According to http://www.av-comparatives.org/, Avira has the best detection rates of any anti-virus, free or otherwise.
However, my son's PC was infected with some self replicating hard as fuck to delete trojan that Avira detected, but couldn't get rid of (my son's acct is a heavily restricted user, but that didn't stop this thing). I ended up having to install an app that would allow me to rename and delete files that's in use by the system in order to clean it up.
best antivirus I've ever used
They used NOD32 v3, NOD has been at v4 for a few months now. I have not used Avira, though I'll check it out soon. I have used AVG, Avast!, PC Tools, & Comodo. I like PC Tools & Comodo is a very nice free suit. It's been a few years since I've tried Avast, I'm done with AVG.
I don't feel like talking about when I used to pay for Norton & then switched to McAfee after Symantec bought out Norton.
Just an fyi, Nod32 is practically always on sale over at www.ncix.com. They just had it on sale and I picked up a license for $21. Also, once you own it, you don't pay full price to renew your license. Looking at my last year invoice, I paid $28 to renew it.
..okay...
So I switched to Avira. Worked fine, but I ended up getting a lot of false positives.
....so, I switched to Avast! with the minimal interface, which is a lot more pleasant to work with (also disabled that annoying "VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED" voice I still have on my laptop). Avast! is a great deal smaller, to its credit, and seems to have a small memory footprint while it's scanning in the background.
The downside? No scheduled scans, at least, not within the Free Version anyway.
This here will tell you how to do the scheduling yourself.
Now where was the option to disable the voice?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Program settings, audio, you'll find a small box that says 'DISABLE AVAST! SOUNDS'. I wasn't sure if it would work, to be honest, but the thing updated without convincing visitors someone was in my bedroom.
EDIT: I looked at the link, and as expected, you can schedule an Avast! scan through Vista's own scheduler (that's how I used to do it on XP). I have to admit, it might just be me, but Vista's schedule program is my primary grievance against it. The whole thing is so daunting.
Granted, I haven't looked at the thing for more than a year, since I tried to fix Vista's defragmentation GUI (namely, get it to show up when it was run). I could just be an idiot in those regards.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685