Recommend me antivirus

Ingleberry · 3 Dec 2010 at 15:20

My Norton Internet Security antivirus subscription about to expire the renewal is £39.99 direct through Norton.

Whats the difference with Internet Security and 360?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-034-NO&groupid=33&catid=164&subcat=

I had 2007 version of this on my old laptop it was slow reasource hungry but i can appreciate how quickly software updates is it any good now?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SW-002-AV&groupid=33&catid=164&subcat=

The other antivirus programs listed here to be honest I never heard off are they any good?

Thanks, Ingleberry

Ingleberry · 3 Dec 2010 at 16:42

I always thought the free ones are like trial software they give you a taste of interface and only picks up very little?

What's MSE please?

Ingleberry · 3 Dec 2010 at 19:19

PapaLazaru said:
MSE and Malwarebytes for an occasional secondary scan.

Paying for AV is for old people who have no grasp of the internet.

I am old enough to have a free bus pass

Ingleberry · 8 Dec 2010 at 19:55

I noticed they all give you the antivirus free but cut out other internet security features like firewall, email scanner, web phising, browser protection, ect.. how critical is these extra features for safe surfing?

Ingleberry · 11 Dec 2010 at 13:58

Now i tried some of these free big guns here's some of my thoughts;

Norton Internet Security I use loosely as a benchmark, booting to 45sec to fully operational screen and total ram used according to windows task manager approx 40% out of 4gb. The best feature is Norton Web Safe during any internet search it highlight risky links, prevention better than cure as they say. Also seems to have the most proactive antispam, antispy and antiphishing aspects too I felt safe shopping and banking online.

MSE boots in 44secs and now uses 47% resources, its very discreet maybe too much I had Trojans appear for first time. It scans take 30-40mins longer than Norton and from searching Microsofts own site it appears new Trojans and virus take weeks and months to be recognised and added to the database or worse just ignored.

MSE is the least advanced antivirus I tried using only its database and struggles to quarantine and remove problems. It does not scan emails or new downloads you have to wait till schedule scan to discover any problems by then could be too late. My worst fear is shopping online it has no protecting against phishing, spying spam or anything. MSE doesn’t always download updates automatically and yes I have set it too, a manual check proves this when new definitions appear days ago not being downloaded.

Then after that fiasco tried AVG, pc loaded quicker at 40secs but took further 10-20secs until desktop was fully usable. Resources varied from 48-52% but upside many more features running and seemed to be a more complete package like Norton Internet Security. Scanned everything when downloaded without delay inc emails unlike MSE but unfortunately proved incompatible with some of my software so had to remove it and raised most false positives so far flagging up stuff at random nothing else picked up.

Meanwhile I been using Spybot which got rid of Trojans that MSE welcomed in, now going try Avast see how that fairs.