Best of the Best AV, any suggestions?

[Azaran]

I?m hoping to get some suggestions from people that have used any of these products.

I?m trying to help a friend?s business with an Anti-Virus recommendation. The business runs 6 computers, all running XP SP/2, all peer to peer so no server. So I?m looking for an AV (or security suite) that offers multi user licenses, which all of these seem to offer.

The anti viruses I?m looking at are:
AVIRA ? AntiVir PE Premium
G Data ? AntiVirusKit (AVK)
Kaspersky ? AntiVirus 7
ESET ? NOD32
AEC ? TrustPort AV

I?m basing these off of av-comparatives.org and? one other site that I cant find the name of right now. (I'm at work so forgive the memory lapse)

AVIRA and Kaspersky I have some passing familiarity with (currently testing Kaspersky) and I?ve heard good things about NOD.

On every test I?ve seen that had TrustPort, they scored 100%, but I?ve never heard of these guys and there?s only one reseller in the US. Has anyone had experience with them?

Thanks for any input

~A

 

[Schadenfroh]

Take a look at the tests linked in the antivirus detection rate thread. Pay attention not only to detection rates, but also false positive rates.

 

[law9933]

From reading forums Kaspersky if buying, Avast for free (maybe), I use AVG free.

 

[Azaran]

Thanks for the link Schadenfroh, for some reason I cant seen more than 3 pages of history when not logged in, and only the front page when logged in....

 

[cobold23]

Hello Azaran,

I`m using NOD32 2.7 since May last year as well as on my home PC but also at work and COMODO firewall. I had really no trouble at all, there is nothing complicated to do, just to install them and use everything as default. No I heard NOD32 has a new release but I did not updated yet.

Cheers!

 

[Captante]

Paid = Kaspersky is overall the best IMO & I currently use Zonealarm Internet security which uses Kaspersky AV.

Also although its not as highly rated as some others, I've had very good results with Panda keeping my wife & kids PC's clean.

Free = Avira

 

[gsellis]

Just remember that best of the best is a 'now' thing. It changes and always will. So don't get too hung up on right now. In 3 years, if your friend has 600 employees, the solution would be different as now he would want centralized management to reduce the cost.

 

[Lemon law]

In many ways there is no doubt about it. Kaspersky, year after year, is the best Active AV on the market. And to put a cherry on top, they offer the fastest patches when new viruses are discovered in the wild.

And what does Kaspersky get for building that better mousetrap? Something like a 2% share of the world wide AV market. It can only speak to total consumer ignorance as consumer stupidity rides again. And to just eke by, they have to lease their technology to other companies that could not otherwise innovate their way out of a paper bag. And at the same time, consumers will will pay big bucks for decidedly inferior products.

Go figure. There is no damn justice in the world.

 

[Spacehead]

Originally posted by: Azaran
Thanks for the link Schadenfroh, for some reason I cant seen more than 3 pages of history when not logged in, and only the front page when logged in....

Go to your Profile-->Personal Options--> up the number on "Days back to view topics for:" & possibly "topics per page" & "messages per page".

 

[Entropism]

I have a license to Kaspersky IS valid until 2010, and I dumped it. It slowed my browsing (this forum would take about a minute or two to load), and the firewall is spotty at best. Currently, I'm using Avira, though I tested GData (didn't like it that much), and heard bad things about NOD and firewalls. The NOD webscanner puts all traffic through a proxy, so your firewall sees all traffic as being from NOD. VERY bad stuff if you want application control.

Trustport is a corporate aimed scanner, and while very secure, is ridiculously high on resources.

 

[Scarpozzi]

AVG is my pick.....for now. It's free(or not), stable, updated frequently, and can be scheduled to scan at night. Its footprint is small.

 

[will889]

I use AVG 7.5 and the free Online Armor firewall, then alternate scans @ Panda, Trend Micro, Kasperski (all online) every third scan, then use SuperAntispyware (resident)+Spybot +spywareblaster with AVG+McAfee Rootkit searchers. Locked down OS with non admin account always for surfing.

 

[pcgamer321]

How is Avira compared to Avast? Should I switch to Avira after I reformat?

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: pcgamer321
How is Avira compared to Avast? Should I switch to Avira after I reformat?

Avira is the best free AV in terms of dectection & actually isn't far behind the best paid-for AV's like Kaspersky, however its one serious flaw is that it doesn't support real-time scanning of POP e-mail.

 

[Azaran]

Thanks so much everyone. It looks like we're narrowed down to Kaspersky and Nod32, depending on the firewall they choose. Unfortunately Comodo doesn't seem to work with Kaspersky, and I'm still waiting to hear back from Online Armor about an issue I've run in to.

~A

 

[Lemon law]

Originally posted by: Azaran
Thanks so much everyone. It looks like we're narrowed down to Kaspersky and Nod32, depending on the firewall they choose. Unfortunately Comodo doesn't seem to work with Kaspersky, and I'm still waiting to hear back from Online Armor about an issue I've run in to.

~A

Not so fast, if you are willing to pay for an AV, include back in antivirus, the paid version has real time scanning of email, and is very competitive on detection rates with NOD32 and Kaspersky when set in expert mode. And I can tell you from experience, antivirus has zero conflicts with the comodo3 firewall.

I do visit the comodo forums, and I don't think Kaspersky has a necessary conflict with Kaspersky either but I have seen reports of conflicts that are sometimes traced to other things.

There is a natural human tendency to point fingers of blame and make associations that are not always true. Its not necessarily deliberate or evil minded, but its usually just mental laziness.

In your case you can hedge the monetary bet but trying a free 30 day trial of Kaspersky, then add comodo3, and see if you do have a conflict thats hard to solve, if not, buy Kaspersky and problem solved. And you can also try the same game with online armor.

That is the excellent thing about online armor and comodo3, they almost configure themselves and do so rapidly. They don't need the long training periods most other firewalls do thanks partly to white lists. And both top rated and free also, a delicious dilemma, life don't get any better than that.

 

[Azaran]

Originally posted by: Lemon law

I do visit the comodo forums, and I don't think Kaspersky has a necessary conflict with Kaspersky either but I have seen reports of conflicts that are sometimes traced to other things.

There is a natural human tendency to point fingers of blame and make associations that are not always true. Its not necessarily deliberate or evil minded, but its usually just mental laziness.

In your case you can hedge the monetary bet but trying a free 30 day trial of Kaspersky, then add comodo3, and see if you do have a conflict thats hard to solve, if not, buy Kaspersky and problem solved. And you can also try the same game with online armor.

Actually I said Kaspersky had a conflict with Comodo because thats what Kaspersky's installed told me when installing.

I've been testing out Nod32, Kaspersky and other various AV flavors via the 30day trials. I had just finished testing out Nod32 and Comodo. I uninstalled Nod32, rebooted, and went to install Kaspersky. At that point the installer said that Kaspersky would not work with Comodo. This is with the current version 9as of 3 weeks ago) of the respective trial softwares.

To be honest I'd like to go with a Kaspersky/Comodo combo since Comodo doesn't semi-cripple the free version like Online Armor does. If you have a workaround for this I'd love to hear it.

~A

 

[Lemon law]

Arazan notes---I uninstalled Nod32, rebooted, and went to install Kaspersky. At that point the installer said that Kaspersky would not work with Comodo. This is with the current version 9as of 3 weeks ago) of the respective trial softwares.

Its still a sequence thing. What would happen if you installed the Kaspersky trial first and comodo next? Nor will say you are wrong. Its still a pain gain time thing. And in the case of comdo3, I can't say they have fixed everything at the speed of light, but the rate at which comodo3 have fixed problems has been truly impressive. Yet you are willing to only take the word of Kaspersky when their information could be outdated now and may be totally outdated in future?

We can both check the comodo forum, but I believe some users can get both to play well with each other.

 

[Azaran]

Lemon,
I realize your trying to make sure all the areas have been explored, however at this point you've now come overly close to insulting me twice. I am not dismissing these options out of hand, nor am I suffering from "mental laziness".

Generally when a program will go to such lengths as to stop it's own installation and instruct you to uninstall another product it makes you notice. In fact until Comodo is uninstalled Kaspersky will not allow itself to be installed. It will even go so far as to open up the Add/Remove programs so you can do it that much faster.

On Kaspersky's support website, it lists Comodo as an incompatible piece of software. In Kaspersky's forums, the only time I could find reference to Comodo was to say it was incompatible. There are numerous forums on a simple Google search that will discuss its incompatibility. Has Comodo resolved this? It looks like perhaps they have with the latest release, however it requires installation in a particular sequence. This makes me leary until I hear back from Kaspersky about compatibility since their installer still reports it as a problem.

Also this AV/Firewall combo is for a friend's office. Which means unless I want to be constantly playing service calls 2 hours away I need it to be as solid as possible. Not something that can "kind of' work. If this were strictly for my own use I'd have no problem with something that needs to be tweaked, the intended user however is not close to computer savvy. For that reason I started looking past Comodo when I couldn't install Kaspersky.

Just because I ask for help on the forums does not mean I don't pursue my own research or testing. Assuming and then accusing me of doing nothing more than taking the quickest route without exploring any other alternatives is frankly insulting.

 

[Lemon law]

Now that you explain it that way, I can see how you might think my comments were insulting. It certainly was not my intent.
I was trying to speak more to the general case and my experiences in finding combinations that work together. And the surprising results of troubleshooting when the cause of incompatibilities are found.

You need something compatible NOW. And in that sense, the new Kaspersky version and comodo 3 may be the worse possible combination. I can't give you any current insights into online armor, I did try it, and online armor has other problems in other areas.

 

[lightstar]

i give a "nod" to NOD32. . . .works well on all our machines for over a year now- seemless/ super small footprint. . . . i have it set up for daily 3 am scans

 

[Pabster]

NOD32.

 

[Net]

i like antivir http://www.free-av.com/

it has good detection rates and its free.

i changed the options to scan everything.

i also set so when it updates no window pops up with an add or anything. it just does it's thing and i don't even know its there until it catches a virus.

http://www.tipsfor.us/2007/08/...e-edition-more-usable/

 

[Azaran]

Lemon,
I may have overreacted and for that I do apologize.

So far I?ve been testing out Kaspersky and Comodo and have been getting VERY odd behavior since running them together. Aside from the rather massive system slow down that?s noticeable with Kaspersky, I?ve had programs hanging for several minutes. When trying to connect a smart phone to update with Outlook it took 10 min for the connection to be made.

Since this behavior started almost immediately after installing both sets f software I?m going to try out Nod32 tonight and see if it changes the behavior at all.

One thing I really liked about the free online armor edition was it brought up a list of software it didn?t know and asked me about each piece. I like that it was a lot more geared toward asking the user than Comodo. Unfortunately I?ve run in to problems with the trial of the paid version so I?m hoping to get somewhere with it this weekend.

 

[Lemon law]

To Azaran,

Not only is the apology accepted, I hope I have learned something about underestimating what work you had already put into understanding all the huge complexities of the total problem. And now I can only sympathize with you as you see an already complex problem get even more complex.