Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Dichotomy on July 29, 2010, 09:59:29 PM
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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.
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No Open Doors... ESET NOD32
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No Open Doors... ESET NOD32
X2 hands down
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ESET NOD32 +3 (in my case ESET Smart Security 4 Suite)
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+4 never looked back
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If I had to use one, it would be ESET's product as well.
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If your going to spend money Eset.
If you want free Threatfire and Avg or Avast.
(and put up with some false positives)
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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.
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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.
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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
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Question about ESET: I know the Smart Suite is a full package (thanks to TD :) ) but what does the NOD32 version lack?
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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>
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Nod32 here as well, couldn't be happier with it.
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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".
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I use kaspersky love it, works great.
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Antivir.. Made in Germany.. Free.. There is a pay version as well with more feature, but I'm not concerned with them..
Has never let me down in 7 years of using it..
That, along with Spyware Blaster and Spybot's Immunize AND Sunbelt Personal Firewall.. All free, all very effective..
Antivir is VERY resource friendly.. Spyware Blaster works much the same way Spybot's Immunize feature works..
It never runs unless you run it.. And once you immunize, you close it.. Sunbelt Personal Firewall is also very resource friendly..
I've never paid for antivirus.. I can tell the Norton and McAfee are intense resource hogs and will absolutely slow your system down..
I've heard things about NOD and Kaspersky, but I've never personally used them.. If you were really wanting to pay for something,
I'd use one of those..
People say they like AVast.. Tired it, didn't like it.. AVG is junk.. Had nothing but false positives with them.. And the viruses that did get through were never detected..
Not to mention AVG was never successful in removing any virus(in my experience).. However, Antivir has NEVER EVER let me down..
God Luck and Good Speed..
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I use kaspersky love it, works great.
I use it also, used it for 3 years and starting my fourth. I gave up Norton many years ago and bounced around until I tried kaspersky. I still use Norton ghost for shadow copies.
Kaspersky does have a bit of a learning curve to begin with.
I have never tried ESET, mabe 1 day I will.
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Another NOD32 vote, only one out there worth buying...
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Been giving MSE (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/) a try lately. Lightweight, good reputation and free. The only thing I dislike in it is, if you don't use automatic updates, it will nag unless you change your Security Center settings.
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For Vista and Windows 7
MSE, Microsoft Security Essentials, its free.
Vista Services Optimizer, free
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I have Avast. After trying several different ones years back, it seems to do quite well. Never had an issue. better yet, It's FREE! Automatically updates, gives you option to go into game mode. Very simple to use, does not hog system.
<S> Oz
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ESET SS4 ( Smart Security 4 ) for my Windows XP Pro OS partitions / HD's, I use the 32 bit version
for my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS partitions/HD's I use the ESET SS4 64 bit version
very small footprint and uses very small amount of resources
( although on startup it might show as using alot if threatsense.net is turned on/enabled ie....real-time file system protection enabled at PC boot-up/turn on time..... but it is a rather quick scan and releases the resources once the bootp scan is complete -----> this is dependent on one's computer performace/speed/memory etc )
NOTE: I do not suggest anyone buying the Business version unless you absolutely need it and have a business with multiple PC's on a Server.... it can become a headache in of itself, unless you fully understand the inner workings.....
I have used NOD32 then switched to ESET SS3 then SS4 for a good while now....
hope this helps
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ESET Smart Security 4 - Light weight, effective, efficient, and affordable. If I recall, they have pretty decent pricing on multiple licenses if you have multiple computers.
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For 3 puters with eset I pay less than 1 with mccaffey.
Semp
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Well, if you'd like the opinion of someone that actually tests all the major (and some minor) antivirus and security products against large sets of active viruses and spyware, and then tests framerate and CPU overhead on real-world games for a major computer magazine, then here are my brief thoughts.
The two best lightweight products are ESET NOD32 and Norton Antivirus 2010.
If you want a more detailed firewall and not much else, then ESET Smart Security 4 is the way to go. If you want still more, then Norton Internet Security 2010 is the one to get.
If you are techie and actually like getting prompted all the time by your security software, then Kaspersky is good - about as effective but more verbose.
There isn't a single free security product that I tested that was able to effectively block the common "custom-polymorphic" scamware viruses that are popular. NOT. A. SINGLE. ONE. That includes AVG, Avira, or Microsoft. There are many commercial products that fail this test too.
If you insist on being a fool and refuse to pay for security software, Avira Antivirus is the most thorough, but you should augment it with ThreatFire, which is also free. But running these two products aren't exactly lightweight.
I get all the antivirus products for free from all the vendors every year. Cost is not an issue when I pick something. With that said Norton AV and Norton IS go on my wife's computers, and ESET or Norton go on my client's computers.
Anyone who tells you, "I have X and it is fine" (where X = a security product) you really need to ask yourself, "How does this person really know they're fine?" Most viruses are sneaky and silent - the good ones never reveal they are there to the user, so how, pray tell, would someone be able to say if their computer is fine without doing forensic testing? The short answer is "You can't."
And how can someone really say one product is better than another without actually running them all on the same machine and doing speed and security benchmarks?
Think about it.
-Llama
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got Eset Node 32 llama... so far so good.
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Llama, you know I respect your opinion and respect you as well, but in my support role, I have had so many problems with Norton I cannot, in good faith, ever recommend it to anyone.
Some of the most irritating problems are corruption of our game files. This occurs even if the application is disabled because Norton really does not stop scanning, they simply stop reporting.
Could this be a configuration issue with Norton? I certainly cannot rule that out. However, does that mean people do not understand how to configure Norton and ESET does a better job with its user interface/configuration front end? Certainly possible.
Then I have one more bone to pick with Norton and McAfee for that matter. Removal. If you do not know you have to go to the WEB sites of the companies to get a special tool to remove the applications, you will be forever under thier spell.
ESET, I have had zero problems reported from anyone using it. Everytime I deal with anyone running Nortin, I have to cringe. It is a painful process.
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I've never had a problem with Norton until 2 days ago. I picked up some malware from a website, ran a full system scan and Norton found nothing. Four hours later (after the scan) Norton detects it...
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Llama, you know I respect your opinion and respect you as well, but in my support role, I have had so many problems with Norton I cannot, in good faith, ever recommend it to anyone.
Some of the most irritating problems are corruption of our game files. This occurs even if the application is disabled because Norton really does not stop scanning, they simply stop reporting.
Could this be a configuration issue with Norton? I certainly cannot rule that out. However, does that mean people do not understand how to configure Norton and ESET does a better job with its user interface/configuration front end? Certainly possible.
Then I have one more bone to pick with Norton and McAfee for that matter. Removal. If you do not know you have to go to the WEB sites of the companies to get a special tool to remove the applications, you will be forever under thier spell.
ESET, I have had zero problems reported from anyone using it. Everytime I deal with anyone running Nortin, I have to cringe. It is a painful process.
No offense taken, Skuzzy. You know I think you're one of the Good Guys.
I understand why you don't care for Norton, but I haven't ever seen the corruption you're speaking of. That said, my test machines are in top condition and are built with good hardware, and it is fair to say you're taking care of computers that aren't. ;-) Plus, there's a situation that YOU are likely to see that I am not. Keep reading.
Removal is another sore spot I can empathize with you about. Dedicated removal tools are a royal pain, and it seems silly to me that a "normal" uninstaller can't do everything that needs to be done. The fact that even more normal utilities (like Nero, for one) now sometimes need dedicated removal tools is insane.
So why do I still like Norton, when ESET does such a great job without headaches?
The answer is Symantec's "Norton Insight." It is amazingly clever and I believe the way of the future. Here's the summary:
Right now, many virus executables are unique. Not just slightly unique, but VERY unique. In fact, some infected websites spit out unique variants of the same family of virus for every unique visitor in real time, and the number of sites doing this is growing exponentially. The variants are different enough and numerous enough that it is getting harder and harder to push out definition updates fast enough to catch up. And relatively soon, it will become impossible to do so.
So what do you do? How about this? Have all the Norton products take fingerprints of every executable they see (sort of like MD5's, but faster to compute), and regularly phone home with these fingerprints to a master database that Symantec maintains. Over time, you see the following: non-unique executables like word.exe are very common, in use by millions (or thousands, or hundreds) of users, and odds are if they aren't caught by the definitions, they aren't infected. However, if in all the millions of Norton users, a computer encounters an executable that NO ONE, or just a few dozen, have ever seen before, AND it isn't in the definition file, Norton products know to be very cautious, alert the user of the potential problem, and suggest the user allow Norton to quarantine it. 9 times out of 10, this is really the right thing to do.
All this happens almost instantaneously over your internet connection as you download new files, BTW.
Now as a software developer like yourself, regularly pushing out new versions of executables and DLLs to around 15,000 users (my guess), I can see how Norton Insight's behavior of quarantining your files for the first few AH users who download and install patches would be annoying (if not disastrous), but after the first few users, this behavior should stop.
But as a user facing these new generations of threats, this technique is probably the way to go, and it is already starting to be copied by other AV programs.
So what should you do as a developer? When I last spoke with Symantec developers, they told me there was a program for 3rd party developers to notify Symantec when new executables are coming out, and not to treat them as potential viruses. I don't know what is involved, but I could try and find out for you if you like.
So I think this reply explains both why I like Symantec and (at least one of the reasons) why you hate it. Its just that we're looking at this problem from two different sides.
-Llama
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I would like to quote here a Windows Secrets article (http://www.windowssecrets.com/2010/06/10) by Robert Vamosi, issue 247 published 2010-06-10, but it is in their paid section. To be short, he raises up some facts about antivirus testing. The testing is not standardized between testing organizations. The detection tests are valid only for the date of the testing due to updating and new viruses. The computer loadout depends on the machine that runs it. The list goes on...
In issue 245 from 2010-05-27 (http://www.windowssecrets.com/2010/05/27) Ian Richards asks, "How much security software do you really need?" No security program is 100% perfect, not even a multitude of them. The worst enemy of your computer's security lies, or better said, sits in front of your keyboard. And concerning a firewall, outbound "phone-home" type malware is not as common as many seem to believe. That said, the built in firewall in Windows after XP Sp2 is adequate.
With my clients I have noticed that the best security suite is one that the user fully understands. For the majority it means a lightweight antivirus program with an interface in the user's language, Windows' firewall and most importantly safe computing habits including right browser choice and cache flushing. The firewall in an ADSL router is a good bonus to that.
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Bizman you are indeed correct sir, the problem is most people now days do not want to practice safe browsing habits.
My daughter has screwed up computers 4 times in the last year by her insisting to play around on facebook.
And I mean screwed up to the point to where it takes a full OS wipe reinstall to get it back.
So after the last one, I'm just refusing to fix it. Don't want to learn to be safe and smart, do without.
Of course I'm taking some grief from Mama bear about it.
Now she is married, he has a netbook, waiting to see how long before it gets crunched.
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I just got rid of nortonand went with Trend micro .
Havent had a problem yet .
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I just got rid of nortonand went with Trend micro .
Havent had a problem yet .
Thank you for making one of my points for me, and only a day or two after I made it. ;-)
What you mean to say is:
"Haven't had a problem yet. As far as I know. And I don't really know."
-Llama
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Thank you for making one of my points for me, and only a day or two after I made it. ;-)
What you mean to say is:
"Haven't had a problem yet. As far as I know. And I don't really know."
-Llama
Actually LLama I have had trend for over a year and a half on my wifes pc and never had a problem .
So yes I can say it!
ALthough I am no expert , Five of my friends are and they all say trend has no problemsI dont mean any offense here but there are other people out in the world who have knowlege and the correct opinions as well
I was not trying to help make anyones point ,just saying what I feel aafter all my voice and opinion matter also .
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Llama's point is a good one. Subtle, but good.
Many people have no idea they have a virus on thier computer. Today's viruses may sleep on your system for months before activating. Some are very subtle and give no hint they are using your computer as a distribution point. They have gotten very sophisticated. There are an entire family of viruses out there, which no anti-virus program can detect, yet.
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I understand that Skuzzy, But to assume that I dont know about viruses and my computers is wrong in itself .
Just sayin!
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I personally think the best was Norton A/V corporate edition... but the problem with it is it doesn't work on vista/7 or any 64bit O/S.
They do have new versions of it out that does support the newer Microsoft platforms, but I can't vouch for any of it. The version I used to use (still do on my netbook running XPHome) was great, low maintenance, and used little resources.
This is the exact opposite of their "home" products which are, in my opinion, more dangerous than most of the junk they are supposed to protect you from.
LLama and Skuzzy are right.. a virus can do some nasty stuff, and many can't even yet be detected, BUT I still don't feel viruses/worms are nearly as much of a threat as adware/spyware. These programs are often not even scanned by A/V software, and are often installed WITH YOUR PERMISSION without you even knowing it. Simply put, if it contains "ASK.COM" or just about any kind of "TOOLBAR" then it's just going to eat away at your system resources, causing problems and giving you nothing in return (while making their publishers money). Even yahoo and google are guilty of these practices. On one hand it's hard to blame them.. they provide services (for the most part) free, and have to make money somewhere... but on the other hand there's got to be a better, more honest way for them to approach this.
Sometimes this stuff gets installed downright secretly, but more often you allow it to happen. I've noticed a growing trend for software (mostly freeware but even some retail boxes) that hide an option during the installation process that you'll easily ignore if you're not looking for it. I think it's Glary Utilities... nice little program.. but during the installation routine it will show your EULA and at the bottom have a checkbox (already checked for you) that says "I agree to the terms of the EULA and wish to install the ASK.COM toolbar and system utilities software". If you're not paying attention and click NEXT then they gotcha! If you DO pay attention, it would be easy to think that you HAVE to install the extra software in conjunction with the original software so you leave it checked anyway. *BUT* you can uncheck it and then proceed safely. I should note that if you actually take the time to read the EULA, you'll see that it is for the ASK.COM and other junk, and when you click NEXT then it shows another EULA for the actual software.
About once every couple of months I'm at my dad's house and I go through and clean up his computer. Every time, he has about five or six toolbars running (ask.com, google, yahoo, AIM, and god only knows what else)... some of which block a lot of his browsing real estate, and a lot that don't. I keep telling him not to install these, be he swears the yahoo one is required for him to access his email, even though I showed him otherwise.
My mom back when we still talked to each other, would REALLY fubar up her system and about once ever few months I would make her back up anything she wanted to keep onto a flash drive, and then just restore it from an image I made. I never even bothered with windows updates or any of that.. just set it to automatic and made her deal with it. No matter how clean or perfectly configured her system was when I was done, she'd manage to fubar it within a few months. About six months after we stopped talking, she gave her computer to my brother and spent almost three grand on one for her. I fixed it up for him (restored from image, updates, etc) and he's been using it for over a year now trouble free... and it's not even that old! I feel sorry for Best Buy's tech support (or whoever she bought it from) as they'll be getting a call from her about once a week!
My point of this novel is that no matter how well protected your system is, and how great the software you run is, it's still up to YOU to keep it clean. I think some common sense practicing safe computing habits (including configuring a good NAT firewall and browser settings) with NO protection whatsoever is many many times more effective than the opposite.
A good practice is to start with a nice fresh install.. put in all the windows updates and hardware drivers.. and then make a disk image. There are many types of software out there that will do this (and some are free!) and with TB hard drives being as cheap and common as they are these days, there really is no excuse for not doing this. If you have the hard drive space, go ahead and install whatever software you want before the image is made. If space is tight, you can image before installing everything (but then you'll have to install everything after restoring in the future). I was able to fit everything on my g/f's father's computer on an image on a single DVD. After this step, make sure you keep backups of any documents or game settings folders and other things you don't want to lose. You can do this to a flash drive, an external hard drive, CD/DVD, online storage... whatever floats your boat!
Then if/when things go south all you have to do is restore your image, install whatever software, and copy your documents back. It really doesn't take that long, and doing this ALMOST removes the need for AV software altogether.
Now if you have critical documents (such as top secret company/government stuff.. or financial records.. or whatnot) then this ups the bar a bit higher.. but people who use their systems in this kind of manner usually already know how to take the proper precautions. I'd be willing to bet that more than 99% of people would lose nothing more than memories if their computer were to get compromised... and that's the easiest stuff in the world to keep backed up.
So.. in a nutshell:
- If someone wants in your computer specifically, they're going to get in no matter what you do... luckily this doesn't happen very often to the average Joe Schmoe
- While random attacks DO happen, very basic precautions will prevent over 99.9% of these types of things
- Back up anything you don't want to lose
- Don't keep anything solely on your computer that you can't afford to lose
- There is no need to be afraid of the internet, so long as you use common sense
- Sometimes A/V applications cause more problems than the malware it is designed to protect you from! (Kind of like medicines where the side effects are ten times worse than the original disease!)
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I understand that Skuzzy, But to assume that I dont know about viruses and my computers is wrong in itself .
Just sayin!
And I'm just sayin' that you've demonstrated no method of determining that you really have "no problem" other than Trend isn't reporting a problem and you don't see any weird behavior.
How do you know if you have a rootkit that Trend isn't detecting again? How do you know you didn't already have a virus when you installed trend that disabled it from the get-go? There are forensic tools for determining this after the fact, and registry scanners you can deploy on a clean system for tracking registry changes as a system get used. Not using tools like this means that you're really blind about your system's status.
In short, if you're like most users, and I'm not saying that you aren't more sophisticated than the average bear, you have no real way of knowing.
Trend makes a pretty good product, that's true. But even in my limited-sample test against real-world viruses and spyware, it got fooled more than once. And it benchmarked slower than Eset and Norton.
-Llama
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OK you all win . Im stupid and your opinion is the only one that matters.I will go back to my blocks and learn how to spell my name now. I guess I dont know that I went and got answers from experts before I decided that Trend would be the best one for the system I use . But since you dont know the system I use , YOu are right
Last post I will ever make
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Sometimes this stuff gets installed downright secretly, but more often you allow it to happen. I've noticed a growing trend for software (mostly freeware but even some retail boxes) that hide an option during the installation process that you'll easily ignore if you're not looking for it.
I think it's kinda hard to avoid this stuff sometimes. My SW firewall caught the driver software for my WiFi card (a big manufacturer) saving files with names like google and yahoo in a hidden protected system directory and immediately deleting them. My conclusion is that it was collecting my search histories and sending them out to sell; it's kind of hard to think of why else it would be doing that.