[PTmax13]

Hello to all users of this forum...!!!
Doing some search lately around antivirus programs and I found that the whole subject is somewhat... confusing! Many different opinions for many products. I personaly have tried most of the antivirus programs available and I must confess that none of them have impressed me with it's performance and/or speed. I 've decided that a little poll might help me and others in my position... So, all of you basic users, power-users, gurus, admins, etc. out there, spare a minute of your time and vote for "Which is the best antivirus, from what you 've known and experienced/tested?"

Thanks for your precious time my friends...

P.S.: I really don't like people who use products like Norton Antivirus just because they have a popular name or just because all their friends use the same one. Names are just names... the actual results are what matter the most. You really shouldn't do that generally with software...

[El_Coyote]

No vote...
I'd have voted for Norton Antivirus 2003, but NAV 2004 sucks, so no vote from here.

well nav IS the best

i know people that had lots of vira that an updated Mcafee didnt detect, but symantecs webscan did (using nav tech ofcourse)

[XIII]

No vote too...

I did not use any anti-virus and still run find. I'll just reformat when i get one. i have not get any virus since last 2 years.

i'll feel bad when i get a virus even it has been cure by an anti-virus.

Buying anti-virus software only encourage more viruses.

[SHINODA]

No vote here, im using AVG, its free, and is updated daily, also its not a system hog like most of the bigger anti virus software.

[Cellar_Dweller]

If there were a vote for NO, NONE, ZERO, ZILTCH Antivirus - that would have been my choice - NEVER used it and NEVER will...

So NO Antivirus is BEST...

I'm right there with ya XIII - I haven't had a Virus EVER and have had my COMPUTERS running for 11 Years and have never gotten one on any of them...

I did get Blaster but that was a joke of a Virus - easily did a manual un-install and it is fine and the reason I got that was doing a XP Activation after doing a REPAIR - back when it was running rampant...

I know what processes I should have running and I know what files are supposed to be there and I mean anywhere and everywhere in Windows and I DO NOT open emails from those I DO NOT know...

I use Adaware and Bazooka and that is all you ever need...

When I get one, if EVER - I will just REBLAST (other term for re-imaging)... :beer:

[tobebana]

Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition

[Dark Biene]

i use GData Anti-Virus with a double scan engine google translated HP

it saved me of hundreds of e-mail worms like "Bagle"
huh....i love that AV prog
btw:
i scanned my complete PC with Norton....
it said everything is fine
then i changed to GData
3 ! more infections found , in ZIP dats!

so, i think the "best" solution is Gdata for me

[Mertsch]

If a scanner ... then KAV or anonther one using the Kaspersky engine

[dimvlaan]

I am using NAV since ages... Never had a virus on. Tha only thing was - like Cellar_Dwellar said - the blaster, just because of not thinking during reactivating...

My Server runs with Symantec CE; Mailserver is being scanned by McAffee... no FW.

Just try to keep my sys updated as much as possible. That stops a lot of possible viruses like sasser / blaster.

[nervsjuk]

I use Avast!
It´s free and I think it works better than NAV...
And yes, i have used NAV. Hate it....

www.avast.com

[Chernobyl]

When choosing a Virus Scanner, its not as simple as which is easiest to use, looks nicest or which finds virii others dont.
Its down to who can you trust to do the job properly.

If you have virii sat in zips, you should really have checked the zips yourself!
Virus scanners cannot get into anything password protected or of unknown (to them) compresssion format. if there is a corruption in a compressed file it may get stuck on that too, or other strange pc phenomenon.
If making sure you are virus free is essential to you, please scan your compressed files.

From what I have used:
Ease of use goes to Norton Antivirus, but unfortunately its very very slow to scan, bogs the PC down while scanning and installs a whole heap of things I'm sure we can live without. ie other virus software doesnt require it.

McAfee was annoying. Sorry to be unspecific, I remember having trouble with Norton, tried McAfee and went back to Norton. A year ago, so take with a pinch of salt.

The fastest virus scanner is Hauri ViRobot.
This scanned my whole PC so fast. When reviewed in November last year, it wouldnt scan files that were not executable. If a virus was inside a file and could be plucked out later, this wouldnt find it.
I dont know how good they are now.
This report is a year old so should be taken with a pinch of salt too,
http://secinf.net/uplarticle/antivirus/Ant...us_Software.pdf

Its a hard thing to know what you can trust the most. With every update your virus scanner does, it can change its own behaviour to cope with new virii and attacks. There are no metrics/methods for a continuous appraisal of who is best though.

Relying on a virus scanner to keep you clean isnt foolproof. Most people will survive fine like this, but not all scanners are up to date otherwise a virus couldnt be new
To help keep my parts twinkling, I use NAV, Adaware, Spybot and Protowall with "The Blocklist Manager". I feel the need to move away from NAVs slowness and bloatware, but I see no other alternative.

[ThudZ3ro]

Trend Micro's PC-cillin (and its been free since it comes with all of the Asus mobo's I use). by FAR the fastest and haven't had one infection in 4 years with their products. In my opinion, the ONLY AV I trust on my best rigs...

[Mertsch]

When choosing a Virus Scanner, its not as simple as which is easiest to use, looks nicest or which finds virii others dont.
Its down to who can you trust to do the job properly.

If you have virii sat in zips, you should really have checked the zips yourself!
Virus scanners cannot get into anything password protected or of unknown (to them) compresssion format. if there is a corruption in a compressed file it may get stuck on that too, or other strange pc phenomenon.
If making sure you are virus free is essential to you, please scan your compressed files.

thats where KAV comes in ... in scans more archives then you can even think of .... even files you would never espect to be an archive ... and password protected ones will be reported in log for sure ... and with KAV 5 you can now enter a password ... if ya know for sure

and last good impression I got by KAV was:
I use mailwasher to filter out all the fu**in spam .. and since V4 it is able to learn ... preselecting spam or good emails ... which btw works really well
now I recently got some virus netsky emails ... and marked them for spam learning ... to learn them mailwasher downloads them and puts them into ONE file for analysis ...
now I scan my PC yesterday and pooof 5 new virus bodys containing 1 virus ... first got a shock holy shit how that ??? till I look in my log and cool ... out of the one file it filtered out the 5 mails that contained netsky as attachment ...
sure KAV was not able to fix this since it is one file but the detection was quite impressive to me .... also if ya look how old 4.5 is you cannot espect the scanner to fix this since MW 4.0 ich much newer then KAV4.5

[Chosen_One]

kaspersky! coz kaspersky found things norton didnt find!

and its faster and dont need as much ram as norton!

[Soulsinger]

used norton before slow piece of shit
all these programs are free:
AVG antivirus grisoft.com
my friend and i used to both have NAV and i took it off and he got on my comp with AVG installed an almost shit his pants at how much faster it ran
the updates are constant and they are quick and dont slow you down
Spybot Search & Destroy rocks updates a lot blocks bad pages cleans that spyware so well
Spyware blaster is the master of blocking activeX crap and stuff like that blocks for IE and Firefox , awesome
Adaware : if u dont know this is good oh well your loss
and a little tiny prog called StartupMonitor, takes like nothing to run alerts you when crap is trying to make itself run at startup and gives you the option of disallowing this, awesome
have not tried everything but from my experience these all work great

[sotos]

I have tested

1)Panda Titanium 2005
2)Mac Afee Security 2005
3)Norton Internet Security 2005
4)Zonealarm Security (latest version)
5)Avast antivirus (latest version)

1) Panda is very good but it's activation and upgrade system SUCKS also it has problems with latest Windows Xp SP2

2)That is what i am using now it's the most friendly security for all my programs, Mac afee it's very good and it's eats less memory from NAV

3)It's solid security but eats too much memory, plus somehow it's unstable in certain situations, really made me angry so i definitely stay away from it from now one

4)Great but it's firewall has some compatibility problems in certain sites
I had to use refresh just to download a page correctly

5) AV is Pretty good but somehow some pages are not played correctly
plus it does not have a firewall sollution