Antivirus etc...

[pnagames]

as my norton freebie is expiring soon i need to decide which antivirus to install and keep for at least a year on

Norton is good and we have been happy BUT the reviews for the norton 360 or the norton internet security 08 have only been average...

what would people recommend?

P.S. we would be buying two to three licences to cover all the pc's we use as to my horror i discovered quite a few things on one of the pcs which is not protected at present unsing ad-aware (lovely program)

[NormanRouxel]

The current edition (Feb 08) of PC Pro has group test of Internet Security Suites and Kapersky Internet Security 7 is their A listed one. It can be got with a 3PC license for £53.

[completerookie]

the PCPro version Norman's talking about is Kaspersky - I use it, its very very good.
PCPro did a group test recently, Norton came in 11th of 13
" a paltry 68% of malware was detected and removed, with many items missed that were identified by eight or nine competing products. The package whose name was once synonymous with antivirus ranked 11th overall in a field of 13."

whereas Kaspersky came in at number1 rating at a brilliant 98%

On the basis that you can pick up a 6 month trial for £4.99 to try it, what have you got to loose.
one point, EACH cover CD is uniquely coded fr the install - if you want to cover 4 PC's, you'll need 4 mags - they did group discount's I can't remember the details, we bout a group licence of 25.

[jont]

Kaspersky is excellent and very low on the resource overheads.. highly recommended.

[Duncan Rounding]

I thought I'd give Kaspersky a trial instead of Norton 7.5 corp. I had to reboot about 6 times but eventually seem to have got it up and running. Initially Norton wouldn't unload, then the MS installer crashed twice for Kaspersky. I was almost going to restore to last night's disk image but persevered.

Hopefully from now on it will be painless.

[jxm28788]

Not to mention that Norton AV seems to think it is a firewall sometimes and keeps popping up messages about my PC being under attack (it's my printer trying to talk to my PC) - and in typical Norton fashion it won't let you get rid of the message, it just keeps popping up and popping up - there is no way to say "just ignore that event" and you can't even switch the bugger off.

I did try norton AV & Firewall a while ago but it was unbearably bad for the same reasons (just much much worse), so I ditched it for just the AV product but it's still pretty annoying.

The problem I had was finding something that worked with zonealarm firewall (mcafee can't seem to autoupdate through zonealarm).

Does the one you mention update itself ok through ZA?

[Duncan Rounding]

I use ZA and had no problems with updates with either Kaspersky (just now) or previously with Norton 7.5. Delete the program from ZA and it should ask you next time it tries to access the internet.

[george]

AVG works very well for us.

[fleetwood]

Also read the PCPro article, and the various software reviews on Amazon, and going for Kaspersky. A 3 site full version licence is £30 on Amazon, which is great value. By comparison, Norton want £39 to renew each machine (or £55 for 3). I've used Norton for donkeys years, but they get greedier each year (it wasn't so long ago, AV renewals used to be £2-£3pa).

Now that it's renewal is up, I just hope I can uninstall Norton cleanly !!! (why do I already know what the outcome will be !!!!!!)

[Cheapprices4u]

nod32

thats all im saying

[pnagames]

Many thanks to everyone

just bought Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0

now the problem will be to uninstall Norton from one of our laptops

[jxm28788]

I use ZA and had no problems with updates with either Kaspersky (just now) or previously with Norton 7.5

ZA and norton are fine it was just mcafee that didn't like it. It's just me that doesn't like norton...

AVG works very well for us.

Yes it worked very well for us until outlook preview tried to preview an email with a virus in it - AVG just didn't spot it at all, we switched to Norton and it found it straight away. I figured one that worked badly was better than one that didn't work...

[leehack]

Norton & AOL are responsible for 90% of problems on a PC, and they should both be outlawed. I would rather have nothing than Norton, resource hungry piece of crap control freak IMO.

[jxm28788]

Norton, resource hungry piece of crap control freak IMO.

Can't argue with that!

[completerookie]

suggest everyone takes a look at the PCPro test on 13 of the latest AV offereings, and look up their own anti-virus software on the dropdown list. - they did extensive tests with hundreds of virus's before they published their findings.

NOD detected a paltry 72% of virus's out there (like the man say's - "enough said"), as did quite a few others, AVG score 83% (5th)
only two scored 90%+ - one was Kaspersky (the highest rating at an incredible 98% detction) and the other was F-Secure Internet Security 2007 - at 93% - no-one scored 100%

its nice to have a bit of a.v software that works "well" (NOD, norton and the like), but "well" ain't good enough when it only scores low 70's out of the 100

It happily detects the virus's it tells you about, but misses 30% of all the others out there - You might as well turn off your A.V software for 8hrs a day and hope for the best.