Computer Hope
Software => Computer viruses and spyware => Topic started by: Calum on September 12, 2007, 01:18:26 PM
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OK, well I'll be making a fresh start with my laptop soon, and I want to get everything right first time, when I first got it I went a bit crazy installing things and I've never really got rid of it all, there's always something left.
Security software is obviously a major consideration, so I'm looking for opinions.
I'm thinking of using Spyware Blaster, Spybot Search & Destroy, and of course an antivirus program.
But which one?
I've tried Norton (urgh), Avast!, Avira Antivir PE and AVG Free.
AVG was the only one I liked out of those, but does anyone else have a program they really like?
It needs to be effective, customizable, include real-time scanning, and it must be light on resources. I don't need anti-spam, firewall or anything like that, just AV. And it doesn't have to be free either, although I would prefer it.
I've been looking at AOL Virus Shield (yes, AOL, the spawn of Satan. But, it's based on Kaspersky 6 and is apparently very effective - and free), Kaspersky Antivirus 7 or Steganos (based on Kaspersky, but cheaper), NOD32, and F-Secure.
If anyone has any other recommendations I'd like to hear them.
Anyone with any of the mentioned AV programs, or one they want to suggest to me, can you please tell me what you think of it as regards resources, customizability and so on?
Thanks in advance.
Calum.
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F-Secure got on of the best AV engines available and is on the forefront of rootkit detection. Unfortunately it has a rumor as a resource hog (which was still true last time I tried it) and slow scan speeds.
I think I've mentioned this a couple of times :) but I use NOD32 on my main machine and I really like. It is light on memory, has a high detection rate, doesn't have a lot of unnecessary features, fast at file scanning and it doesn't bother you every time it does something. You know it's important if it pops up with a warning. And it also got rootkit detection.
Only negative thing I can say about it is that its spyware detection could be better. But you'd probably be better of using a dedicated anti spyware solution no matter what AV software you end up with.
Kaspersky is also a good choice. Good engine, fast, rootkit detection. And as far as I remember it also monitors suspicious activities in the registry. Only negative thing I can say about it is that it has some compatibility issues. It doesn't work with the Comodo firewall for example.
Well that was just my two cents... but I think you'd be pretty well protected no matter which one you end up choosing.
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You got any figures on memory usage and scan times for the programs you've used?
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Sorry no, the above post is a mix of my personal experiences with the programs, AV-Comparatives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/), and my interest for security related IT news.
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AVG Antivirus and SpyBot S&D Resident are still doing it for me Calum.
What firewall are you going for?
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AVG Antivirus and SpyBot S&D Resident are still doing it for me Calum.
Same here. I'm quite partial to TrojanHunter, though, but it's not freeware.
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AVG Free
AdAware
SpyBot
AVG Anti-Virus
aSquared Free
This package has kept me completely clean for some time now. I also DLoad and run the latest Stinger once every 2 weeks just to be sure.
Opinions will vary on protection apps but with them all free and effective i'm not about to change anything soon.
BTW the last report i read documented that AVG had the smallest footprint/memory usage of the top 15 A/V apps...i'll dig out the article for you.
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Sorry no, the above post is a mix of my personal experiences with the programs, AV-Comparatives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/), and my interest for security related IT news.
OK, no problem. I couldn't find any figures either, I find them easy to deal with, they're something that's just easy to recognise with one being clearly better or worse.
AVG Antivirus and SpyBot S&D Resident are still doing it for me Calum.
What firewall are you going for?
Hardware firewall. See this topic. (http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,42134.0.html)
BTW the last report i read documented that AVG had the smallest footprint/memory usage of the top 15 A/V apps...i'll dig out the article for you.
I have heard people saying it's got a small footprint, one of the reasons why I was using it. Just trying to find something better as always, not that there's anything wrong with it. I'd be interested to see the article if you can find it.
Another thing is that what I was using, Spybot, Adaware 2007, Spyware Blaster, AVG and Comodo Firewall, plus common sense, Firefox with manual cookie control and Noscript, kept me clean for as long as I was using that combination. I'm ditching Adaware (no real-time protection or immunization) and Comodo and I'm just looking at whether I should replace AVG. So I do have a rounded security suite in other respects.
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Calum,
Didn't fimd the link but here's part of yhe article...
[Saving disk space - attachment deleted by admin]
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Interesting.
Thanks for that, it does show a bit of difference.
Although, technically AVG could have very few processes using 3Gb of memory each, and Norton's thousands of processes could use 2Kb each.
But, we all know it's the other way round.