What would be the best Antivirus and Firewall Package

[4T5]

Snipped

Whats going on here then. I find myself agreeing with you twice in one day.

Richdog is totally correct. Norton is bloated, unreliable at finding infections even after an age of time has passed while it does it and to top it all you have to pay for it and its expensive. Utter crap.
Even after you uninstall it bloats up your system with crap files that need finding individually and deleting. Norton to me is not an AV it is a Virus.

I like Free and secure and lite which is why i use the following
Avast.
Ad Aware SE + Spybot + Ewido. Used religously every other day.
Also i am now using the spyblaster that Richdog recommended earlier. I can confirm it uses NO resources at all. How it works or how effective it is i can't tell yet though.

 

[Richdog]

malc i'm really going to have to teach you how to use quotes one of these days...

Also i am now using the spyblaster that Richdog recommended earlier. I can confirm it uses NO resources at all. How it works or how effective it is i can't tell yet though.

Uses a set of registry fixes/edits that common spyware uses to run. It effectively blocks 90% of everything from downloading or installing on your PC. Just see how much less spyware you pick up when you scan.

 

[4T5]

Go for it mate. I am old but never to old to learn.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

1 - Norton is a large memory and CPU usage hog both thile idle and while scanning.

2 - It misses a LOT of things when it scans, i've lost count of the clients we have had who have defected from Norton (latest version) to our AV solution (Panda) and all of a sudden found keyloggers, trojans and viruses that they never even knew were there. Norton had completely ignored them. It is known in the AV industry as being a poor performer, the reason it's so popular is because people who don't know better buy it from PC WORLD, and it tends to come bundled with a LOT of PC's. People just trust the name... unfortunately.

3 - Ages in PC terms is very relative, an extra couple of minutes to start the computer and "let it settle" is a long time to most heavy PC users.

4 - Crappy technical support.

I find the above hard to believe and just think that its another "lets bash the successful" myth being generated.
I have two hard drives that I swop over - one has Norton and the other has Zone Alarm Security Suite on it and I can't see any difference with loading etc at all.

I have many users PC's in my house that I 'fix' and they have all manner of Anti Virus programs on them including Norton, Zone Alarm, McAfee, NOD32 etc and one thing I can say 100% is that all of them miss things. The first thing I do is remove the HD and put it in my machine and let Norton Antivirus, Adaware and Trojan Guarder to do a scan. More often than not I will put my other boot drive in and see what Zone Alarm picks up on the offending drive. I then go looking manually in the registry file and looking in mainly the system32 directory for files I don't recognise.

The only thing I have seen with Norton Antivirus is that some machines just don't like it and no matter how many times you install/uninstall, run a registry cleaner etc, it still doesn't want to work properly and thats when Zone Alarm is suggested.

For me personally, Norton works and works on the four PC's in my house and they all load in very quickly and none have suffered with delays and two minutes extra on loading times. We have at least 500 PC's at the factory I work at and all run Norton and according to our expert nothing has ever infiltrated in years. When I asked him would it be better to run alternatives he just laughed and I'm willing to bet that he didn't install Norton because he didn't know better. Each to their own I guess.

This begs another question -
There must be quite a few Administrators on these forums who are responsible for 50+ computers in their places of work.
What anti-virus software do you use?

 

[4T5]

Just control alt delete on a few of those machine and check how many processes are in use and what is being used and compare.
It's as simple as that.

 

[MarcLister]

First, avoid Norton at all costs. It will consume your PC like a cancer.

Now, for antivirus, the best are probably NOD32 and Kaspersky. Both are very good at what they do. I use NOD32 and I hardly notice it is there. In fact, the only time I know it is still running is when I see a balloon tip telling me it has updated. Im sure the same can be said for Kaspersky, but I'll leave that for people who have/do use it.

As for firewall I am not so sure. I use my routers firewall and that is more than good enough. Names I seen thrown about a bit are Symantec and Zone Alarm. But again I will leave this for people who do use software firewalls.

So you don't bother with a software firewall at all? Or the Windows offering? I've got a router/modem combo for home so I might try running that later on.

Whatever you end up choosing, the best weapon you have is a little thing called Common Sense

SiriusB

I've heard of that. Is that freeware or do you have to pay for a licence? Is it frequently updated?

 

[james.miller]

well, the truth is norton is bloatware. Many many peopel have found this in the same way they have with zonealarm. Norton for me was slow loading, sucked too much cpu time and slowed the pc down as a whole.

Avast doesnt do this. It's not some 'let's bash norton because of some myth' thing, its the truth.

 

[Richdog]

I find the above hard to believe and just think that its another "lets bash the successful" myth being generated.

Mate that's a ridiculous suggestion, but amusing nonetheless for its ignorance (don't mean that offensively or in a 'personal' way, just can't find any other way of putting it) I work for an AV company, my information is based on real experiences with small and large corporate and retail clients, you believe what you like but you are still mistaken i'm afraid.

I have had clients tell me directly, numerous times, that after removing Norton form their PC they have found significant virus/spyware on their PC after scanning with our product. For corporate users, this is a very serious thing.

I have many users PC's in my house that I 'fix' and they have all manner of Anti Virus programs on them including Norton, Zone Alarm, McAfee, NOD32 etc and one thing I can say 100% is that all of them miss things. The first thing I do is remove the HD and put it in my machine and let Norton Antivirus, Adaware and Trojan Guarder to do a scan. More often than not I will put my other boot drive in and see what Zone Alarm picks up on the offending drive. I then go looking manually in the registry file and looking in mainly the system32 directory for files I don't recognise.

Yes, no AV solution is 100% perfect.but some are worse than others. Norton is a bottom-ranker in the major-league as far as performance goes... just about anyone in the industry could tell you that.

The only thing I have seen with Norton Antivirus is that some machines just don't like it and no matter how many times you install/uninstall, run a registry cleaner etc, it still doesn't want to work properly and thats when Zone Alarm is suggested.

Yeah, it is an absolute bitch to uninstall and when you do it leaves a ton of crap lying around your registry, and processes still running on your PC. Awful.

For me personally, Norton works and works on the four PC's in my house and they all load in very quickly and none have suffered with delays and two minutes extra on loading times.

You're in the min

We have at least 500 PC's at the factory I work at and all run Norton and according to our expert nothing has ever infiltrated in years. When I asked him would it be better to run alternatives he just laughed and I'm willing to bet that he didn't install Norton because he didn't know better. Each to their own I guess.

Then sadly, your "expert" isn't quite as good as he thinks. And trust me these days, the term "PC expert" is a moniker thrown about too readily these days. I would love for him to scan with another qualty AV solution and see what he finds on his PC. After all, his knowledge of what's infecting his PC is only as good as the software he is relying on, most of the time.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I work for an AV company,

 

[Richdog]

Ahh, the sum total of your already rather weak argument is suggesting that I cannot deliver impartial advice because I work in the industry, despite the fact that this makes me more well-informed on the subject than the average gubbin. Nice one mate, well done.

 

[Firegod]

When I asked him would it be better to run alternatives he just laughed and I'm willing to bet that he didn't install Norton because he didn't know better. Each to their own I guess.

Yup...you just can't get through to some people that Norton is pretty poor. Nevermind ey.

Let's look at my experience with it. Slows boot times dramatically compared to NOD32. Misses more stuff than NOD32 in my experience "woah, oh no you did not just go there!" well it's true. I used to run Norton on my PC a few years ago and somehow I had viruses, couple of formats later and I decided to get NOD32... well wouldn't you know, not 1 virus in the 2+ yrs running it! Woop!

One of my mates runs it on his laptop, its got to the point where its infected yet again for like the 3rd time this year that he's asked me to take a look at it. Norton again, working beautifully, just sucking up all that RAM and nothing much else.

 

[4T5]

Another thing to note is the spam folder. When i used Norton i was always getting spam slung in this folder.
Since using Avast i only get around 1-2 a day whereas with norton it was more like 10-20 a day. Why i don't know it's just a fact. No norton spam folder = no spam.
God knows where it goes now, all i know is that i don't get it.


Anyway just control/alt/delete on a few machines and check. Resource usage with norton =

 

[SexyGreyFox]

Ahh, the sum total of your already rather weak argument is suggesting that I cannot deliver impartial advice because I work in the industry, despite the fact that this makes me more well-informed on the subject than the average gubbin. Nice one mate, well done.

I work for a very large white goods factory and its comparable to me slagging off every other white goods factory which I won't do.
We even take these other white goods and test them and find stuff wrong but no doubt they do the same with our goods.
When you work for a company selling a product then its very hard to praise another product above yours.
I'm not saying that Norton is above your product whatever it may be, just that its much of the same.

I used to run Norton on my PC a few years ago

And theres the rub - "a few years ago".
Old Nortons were awful and very buggy and I stayed away and chose alternatives.

One of my mates runs it on his laptop, its got to the point where its infected yet again for like the 3rd time this year that he's asked me to take a look at it. Norton again, working beautifully, just sucking up all that RAM and nothing much else.

I can say the same for my mate Ian who runs NOD32, my workmate John who runs Zone Alarm Security Suite and my boss Graham who uses Zone Alarm.
At least once a month they're bringing me printouts of problems because their sons have been visiting sites they shouldn't and their Security Suites have picked nothing up.
And I'm not saying that Norton would pick them up either.

 

[SiriusB]

So you don't bother with a software firewall at all? Or the Windows offering? I've got a router/modem combo for home so I might try running that later on.

Why bother running a software firewall, which consumes resources, when I have a perfectly good hardware firewall, which consumes NO resources? I have been using just my router's firewall for around a year now and I have yet to be come victim to hacks or anything of the sort.

I've heard of that. Is that freeware or do you have to pay for a licence? Is it frequently updated?

It is freeware, but most people don't realise it exists. Out of those who do know it exists many of them have no idea how to use it

We have at least 500 PC's at the factory

If you had that many PCs running would it not be likely they are using the corporate edition of Norton AV? To my knowledge Norton Corporate is far less bloated than its retail counter-part and better at detecting threats... so I am told.

 

[Richdog]

I work for a very large white goods factory and its comparable to me slagging off every other white goods factory which I won't do.
We even take these other white goods and test them and find stuff wrong but no doubt they do the same with our goods.
When you work for a company selling a product then its very hard to praise another product above yours.
I'm not saying that Norton is above your product whatever it may be, just that its much of the same.

lol mate i'm not "slagging off" Norton (as you put it) simply because it's a different product, I am just giving honest facts about its performance. You can say what you like but it doesn't change the fact that Nortton is a bad AV program. if you think what i'm saying is a result of "marketing" for my company then more fool you, because that's the sort of thing I just don't do. I'm an honest and straight-talking bloke, and I am in a MUCH better position than you to be able to talk about this subject factually and objectively.

My companies product is indeed better than norton, thats a fact confirmed by professional independant reviewers, but then again so are the majority of major security solutions on the market so it's no big boast, and I would never claim otherwise because I tell it like it is. Norton is a running joke amongst the AV industry no matter who you work for (besides Symantec obviously).

Fair do's if you've paid your money and don't want to feel like you've paid for an inferior solution (which unfortunately you have, like many others in this world), but you're defending the indefensible to someone who is informed on the subject and likely knows a fair bit more about security solutions and their effectiveness than you do. But then again i work with them so I have to be.

 

[MarcLister]

Why bother running a software firewall, which consumes resources, when I have a perfectly good hardware firewall, which consumes NO resources? I have been using just my router's firewall for around a year now and I have yet to be come victim to hacks or anything of the sort.

Yeah just wanted to check. I've read about people running a software firewall and a hardware one as well. Waste of time really and resources. I've never run a hardware router before so I just wanted to check that it is the norm to remove any software firewall when running a hardware alternative.

It is freeware, but most people don't realise it exists. Out of those who do know it exists many of them have no idea how to use it

You implying summat? Eh?!

If you had that many PCs running would it not be likely they are using the corporate edition of Norton AV? To my knowledge Norton Corporate is far less bloated than its retail counter-part and better at detecting threats... so I am told.

I've heard that too, corporate versions of Norton are less bloated and better at their job compared to the general retail versions. I admit I've only "heard" it but it wouldn't surprise me if it were the truth.

 

[Richdog]

I've heard that too, corporate versions of Norton are less bloated and better at their job compared to the general retail versions. I admit I've only "heard" it but it wouldn't surprise me if it were the truth.

Corporate versions of all AV products run a lot smoother than their retail counter-parts, and Norton is no exception. However, it still has pretty much the same detection engine.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

Fair do's if you've paid your money

You lost me there.

 

[SiriusB]

You implying summat? Eh?!

I let people make their own implications

Corporate versions of all AV products run a lot smoother than their retail counter-parts, and Norton is no exception. However, it still has pretty much the same detection engine.

I thought as much. Makes sense they wouldnt spend time on two separate engines when one would clearly be inferior.

SiriusB

 

[Richdog]

You lost me there.

I just presumed you owned a paid copy of Norton, however it's a completely minor detail in the scope of this debate and not even worth quoting to query. But i'm sure you knew that...