The consolidated ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE thread (1 Viewer)

[Paul Padilla]

I'm a hands on Network Administrator and before that I spent several years with an outsource IT engineering and repair firm. While I disagree with rob-h that there is nothing wrong with Norton's, difficulty uninstalling alone should never lead to wiping the drive. Symantec knows how invasive their programs are and they offer a removal tool specifically for failed un-installs based on version that removes all of the registry entries and directories. I've had to use this from time to time and I've never run up against a situation where it didn't correct the Norton's issue.

I use Trend at home, but Norton's corporate was in place at my company before I got there. The only issue we've had was a user opening an attachment that they knew they shouldn't have which contained a brand new virus. The best anti-virus on the planet is no substitute for safe computing.

 

[rob-h]

I still dont get what you mean by "invasive". Its easily removed even without the uninstall. As a matter of fact there is complete instructions on how to do it on thier site It should take under 2 minutes.

 

[Diallo B]

amen, brotha!!!

 

[Paul Padilla]

For the technically minded, yes. But for the average home user who isn't comfortable navigating knowledge bases much less editing the registry it can be a nightmare. I acknowledged above that the tool to recover from a failed un-install works well, but finding that information and knowing how to use it isn't as easily understood as experienced techs and users like ourselves can sometimes make it out to be. Joe ran into problems so bad he decided to wipe the drive and from his many posts I've read he seems to have a great deal of experience. In spite of that he wasn't able, or couldn't locate the info, to extricate Norton's successfully.

By invasive I mean that Norton's products add far more registry entries and profile directories than most other products and many of them share features with other Symantec products like Ghost or pcAnywhere. Problems with one can domino effect compounding un-install glitches.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Paul:

Thanks. I was specifically addressing the problems and needs of home users, this thread obviously having been started by one. When I wrote something to the effect that Norton can be so bad that "you have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall from scratch" - I was using the generic second person - I did not write that I had to do so.

With all due respect to rob-h and others I know all about Norton's repair tools - assuming you can get to the internet to access the things they're fine. (If you're not in a multi-PC environment, and home users often aren't, "go to the web for help" is not very good advice for a user with a crippled machine that can't get to the web.) But I wasn't talking about what I would do in a given situation.

For non-technicians who don't have access to a clean machine or other tools, Norton is overpriced for what it does, underperforms the competition and is too much of a pain in the ass. And, like Microsoft products, it also suffers from Big Kahuna syndrome: Precisely because so many people use it, it is the program that virus writers most like to attack. You can do more damage exploiting a security hole in Norton, McAfee, Outlook or IE than you can by finding and exploiting equally dangerous holes in PC-Cillan, GroupWise or Firefox. It isn't so much that the latter are inherently more secure, it is more that it isn't worth people's time to attack them. (Although that is changing, especially with the recent vogue for Firefox.)

Clinton asked for a recommendation and I gave him one. I don't see how telling him that Noroton is simple and trouble-free for someone with a few technical certifications under his belt really changes anything that I had to say.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Phil Kim]

Joe,

I don't have the source in front of me, but my finding is from multiple sources (revealed by several threads at Arstechnica). AVG had between 65-75% detection rate, depending on the source. Now, I am sure AVG can clean up stuff that others may have missed, but 65% is not a very good figure. I believe F-Secure was consistently at the top, followed closely by Kaspersky.

 

[Mike Fassler]

F-secure is awesome and has been for a longtime thats why places like NASA use their software, there is no perfect anti-virus they all miss something at one time or another, it really comes down to how well it is supported and updated.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Thanks for all the replies. Didn't mean to start a war though. I've never had trouble with NAV and have been using it since I dropped McAfee about 3 years ago. (Talk about a bad product. Kept causing crashes and the tech support was atrocious.) We ghost all our machine HDDs at work and I've never thought about doing it at home but I should.

I'll check out NAV 2005 to see if I can get a good discount. Thanks.

 

[Bob Graz]

I've been using the free version of AVG for 2+ years now and have had no virus issues that I'm aware of that it hasn't caught. I read the detection rates when I was deciding what to do (wanting to get rid of Norton) and was initially nervous about trusting AVG, or any other free AV software for that matter. Now that AVG has stood the test of time for me, I'm a big advocate of it. No one AV program is going to be 100% effective. I occasionally run Housecall (1 per month or so) just as a precaution. I also use my routers hardware firewall, I use firefox, MS s/w firewall and ad-aware and spybot for spyware (as well as Housecalls spyware scan, when I run it).

As was said in an earlier post, the most important way to protect your system is to be aware of the threats and use a number of tools on a routine basis to protect your system.

Trusting any one piece of s/w just isn't adequate, but trusting the power of a number of them and exercising good practices will protect your system as much as possible.

 

[Arthur S]

As of the most recent count I could find, Hotmail had over 140,000,000 subscribers. 7 times larger than the next largest free e-mail provider.

What does MSN Hotmail know that they have chosen to use Trend Micro (PC-cillin) over all other anti-virus programs?

While preparing for this post I happened to come across this site;

http://anti-virus-software-review.to...=18&ttrkey=avg

PC-cillin outscored AVG in effectiveness, ease of use, help/documentation, and it is the only product tested that has live telephone support. It is the ONLY product tested that also included a fire-wall.

When I helped my sister install PC-cillin 3 weeks ago we only had to wait 2 minutes for a tech support person to come on the phone. I was amazed.

For non-geeks, live telephone support is certainly worth the $15 a year it costs to buy PC-cillin from Buy.com (if you happen to miss one of the promotions where PC-cillin is free).

I would guess that now that Consumer Reports has top rated PC-cillin sales will be growing considerably.

All comments are welcome.

Thanks

 

[ThomasC]

Not by much, and I don't see a difference after reading the justification of the ratings.

Effectiveness ratings for the top 3 rated products:

1) BitDefender: 4 out of 4
The VB 100% logo is awarded to anti-virus products that:

Detect all "In the Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning in Virus Bulletin's comparative tests.

Generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files.

Bitdefender Standard was awarded the VB100, the Virus Bulletin certification that the product is able to detect all the viruses which are currently existent in the wild. Once again, BitDefender passed with flying colors, and the test team noticed an improvement in the overall detection rates from previous tests.

2) PC-cillin: 4 out of 4
In Virus Bulletin's tests with live viruses, previous versions of PC-cillin earned the coveted VB100% percent rating in five of its six most recent Windows tests. The built-in scheduler has three default scans preset. You can edit or delete these defaults in order to personalize scanning tasks targeting specific file types, drives or dates.

3) AVG: 3.5 out of 4
The VB 100% logo is awarded to anti-virus products that:

Detect all "In the Wild" viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning in Virus Bulletin's comparative tests.

Generate no false positives when scanning a set of clean files.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Couldn't have said it better myself. We use Symantic at work and the only virus we've been hit with was more or less an inside job... someone brought a tainted floppy from home and ran a program on a shipping computer and knocked the whole system offline.

As a side note: I just picked up NAV 2006 and it was actually $6 cheaper than NAV 2005. Gotta love Wal~Mart.

 

[Neil Joseph]

That could have also been a direct quote from your's truly. Ditto that.

 

[Arthur S]

Thanks Thomas

Never the less, they did rate PC-cillin higher and perhaps more important, the free fire wall, and free telephone tech support make this the AV of choice for all those who can bear to part with 4 cents a day.

 

[Kyle McKnight]

Now it sounds like you're shilling for them Arthur. I like my AVG.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

no offense, but the fact that msn chooses pc-cillin tells me mothing. it's probably more of a business decision than anything else. for my windows box, i like avg as well.

CJ

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

We use Trend Micro OfficeScan on the statewide system where I work. It has failed to block four major viruses in the year and a half that I've been working there. We've been reduced to running around with patches on CD (and sometimes freeware like AVG) to fix the problems that Trend failed to stop. It also has one of the most useless user interfaces and reporting features I've ever seen. It is a dog that was forced on us by the state procurement process and the low-bid approach that entails. I would never recommend the product to a home user. If you need a firewall and don't trust the one built into Windows (and/or the one built into your router/gateway if you have broadband) by all means add another product - a really good piece of software like Spygate Personal Firewall which is available for free, does a superb job of making your PC a "stealth" machine and which has a fraction of the memory and resource footprint of clunkier solutions like ZoneAlarm. (And which also includes things like backtracing a IP address in the free address, which ZoneAlarm only includes in its retail edition.)

Serious, Arthur, do you work for Trend?

Regards,

Joe

 

[Scott L]

I liked NOD32 when I had it installed. It won some awards for perfect detection and all that yatta yatta. But I didn't feel like paying $40 for it then $30 per year when my ISP hands out full copies of McAfee for free.

I think this chart is messed up. They add points for toll-free tech support? Who ever calls for help regarding anti-virus software??

 

[Paul Padilla]

The average single computer home user who can't get to the Internet because of a virus or spyware. It kills me when programs or error messages tell you to check the knowledge base or E-mail tech support when you can't get out to the Internet in the first place. It's like saying, "If you are experiencing problems with your telephone, please call 1-800-blah blah blah.

 

[Dan Driscoll]

I will never use any Norton product ever again. Last year I bought the 2005 Internet Security bundle, but after I installed it my system could not read my CD or DVD drives. I uninstalled it and the system could read the drives again. I searched on-line for similar problems and fixes, but couldn't find anything at the time, so I called Norton. They wanted $30 just to talk to me.