Okay beat a dead horse - Antivirus software

[Dichotomy]

I hate hate HATE Norton and McDonalds.. or whatever that other major player is.  How about some decent free or at least reasonably priced antivirus, spyware, malware, and so on software.  I don't really care if its free or not but even AVG is becoming a PITA.  Fire away gents.

[Chalenge]

No Open Doors... ESET NOD32

[TilDeath]

No Open Doors... ESET NOD32

X2 hands down

[Masherbrum]

ESET NOD32 +3 (in my case ESET Smart Security 4 Suite)

[minke]

+4 never looked back

[Skuzzy]

If I had to use one, it would be ESET's product as well.

[Ghosth]

If your going to spend money Eset.

If you want free Threatfire and Avg or Avast.
(and put up with some false positives)

[Skuzzy]

I am steering folks away from AVG.  It has become bloated and problematic, here of late.  It has all the earmarks of some programmer from Norton or McAfee working on it, and that is not a good thing.

[Fulmar]

For friends and relatives on a budget, I first used to recommend Avast and then found AVG.  I since then don't recommend free based antivirus because of poor performance in preventing infections that I've experienced.  I only recommend ESET now.

[Dichotomy]

I'm with Skuzz I used to love AVG but the love affair is over and time to move on I'll check out ESET

[1701E]

Question about ESET:  I know the Smart Suite is a full package (thanks to TD ) but what does the NOD32 version lack?

[Ghastly]

I'll probably get flamed for this - but what NOD32 is missing that SmartSuite has is what you don't want anyway - the personal firewall. 

If you don't have a good perimeter firewall, get one.  But personal firewalls - if they are controlled to the point of actually being useful - are very intrusive and cause far more issues than they ever fix. And because of the Windows architecture, half of what you'd want to ideally control for is lumped under "system" and even worse, "svchost" - and you can't control for it separately anyway.  Conventional wisdom argues that you "need" a personal firewall, but on an effort/reward ratio scale it's one of the least useful tools you can use. 

All IMO, YMMV of course.

<S>

[whiteman]

Nod32 here as well, couldn't be happier with it.

[Masherbrum]

I'll probably get flamed for this - but what NOD32 is missing that SmartSuite has is what you don't want anyway - the personal firewall.  

If you don't have a good perimeter firewall, get one.  But personal firewalls - if they are controlled to the point of actually being useful - are very intrusive and cause far more issues than they ever fix. And because of the Windows architecture, half of what you'd want to ideally control for is lumped under "system" and even worse, "svchost" - and you can't control for it separately anyway.  Conventional wisdom argues that you "need" a personal firewall, but on an effort/reward ratio scale it's one of the least useful tools you can use.  

All IMO, YMMV of course.

<S>

I've yet to have EVER had a "virus" on a Home PC that I've maintained.   The ESET Firewall is "set it, leave it on while gaming and forget it".   

[kilo2]

I use kaspersky love it, works great.