Give me last word on best anti-virus...

Sorry people. I have been all over the forums lately. But when people offer help, I'll impose. I need the lowdown on Symantec's line of Anti-virus. Is it true? The slowdowns on your system when you use it? I hate going to McAfee stuff - on my macs I use Norton's but only use and update version 8 of anti-virus. But for my pc laptop I need something to fulfill the following: email/internet protection, and anti-virus detection and riddance. Is this too tall an order for one bundle? Should I get the highly toted Trend MicroPC-cillin as reviewed by Consumer Reports?

I need real life experiences with such ultilites. Want to install and sort of forget them-of course, something easy to update. ANY good or bad reports welcome.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
macmac

 

I and many of my firend use Panda Platinum 7.0 www.pandasoftware.com
It scans faster than all the others I've used and does not slow the CPU to a crawl like the norton products do. Plus it has always found things that norton has been unable to detect.

Try it
Jack

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

Hey bootleg2go,

Looks pretty good and easy to implement. Price is not bad either. Will purchase.
Thanks,
macmac

 

Before you buy anything, check out the AVG Personal Edition. This is what I use. It's fairly quick, they keep up with the new viruses quite well and best of all it's free. the website is http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_index.php

 

What's wrong with McAfee? I use it and it does not require nearly as many resources as Norton and others. Heuristic scanning could use a boost, though.

 

Dear ReverendDC,

I gave up using McAfee since OS9 days. I had questions concerning why it would freeze up my Pismo 2000/Apple Pwrbook whenever I accessed its scanning mode. From day one that I have been emailing them, they told me to recheck my installing procedure and to see if I had any peripherals that may be a conflicting factor. I followed their suggestions and eliminated all peripherals. Then I stopped getting ANY replies to my emails!! Phone service was just the same!

I gave them more time to respond and finally said goodbye and never looked back. The problem was never addressed/solved. Went to Norton's and though slow in scanning and sometimes quitting, it worked more than McAffee's stuff. I am happy it works for you though, but I will never support that company again.

Thanks for the reply.
Sincerely,
macmac

 

Good deal. I don't use Macs, so I really don't know about software feasibility with their systems.

For Windows systems, though, it works very well. I can understand fully why you don't purchase their software, though.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by ReverendDC

 

To All:
My associate's Sony Vaio tr3 is readily using the Panda Titanium I purchased! My gift to her for using her laptop as a test bed. Simple install! Will buy another single-user license for my laptops - my Inspiron700m was pushed back to Sept 1 delivery!

Anyway, Virex 7.5 (the latest release) is a bummer in Mac version! Reports that it is deleting files! And this was their released version not their beta model!

Panda will get my money. But maybe I should take a free look at Zuggy's choice. Anyway, great feedback from you guys! Thanks!
Sincerely,
macmac

 

My last words on the best AV(I meant Anti-Virus, not Adult Video), is actually to educate the users. The truth is, it doesn't matter how good the AV software is, it's always behind the virus creator, hence I have not seen any AV software that have the fix for the virus before it's actually been created by the virus creator.
<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Macmac

 

Consider installing both an antivirus and a firewall. Freeware is available for both. I use AVG Personal antivirus and Sygate Personal Firewall. About once a week, I also run Adaware and Spybot (free editions, of course) to check for misc spyware, etc. When the students returned to Washington State Univ last week, they were given a disk to install before they were let on the campus network. It included AVG antivirus! Set your Usenet news server to news.grc.com and read the grc.security.software forums for more discussion. I've also used Panda mentioned in a previous message.

 

This post is a learning experience for me. So far, I have to get the alphabet clear on all the anti-virus stuff around here. Much appreciated. I am hoping that the installs of these AVs will go smoothly.

Now another twist would be if a network that I need to access has a VPN feature, would I have trouble(s) with any of these AVs and Firewall? Maybe I should ask you to wait before answering because my Dell order got pushed back to Sept 1 delivery date.....

I can do nothing until I get my 700m first! It is a little irritating.

Pleased bear with me a little longer.
Thanks Mikeeve and all the rest!
Macmac needs to rest his eyes for a little while.

 

Well, you will have to do something w/ the firewall software. and there are two type of VPN in genereal, PPTP(Point-to-Point Tunnel Protocol) and L2TP(Layer 2 Tunnel Protocol). As you might have guessed(well, may be not) the L2TP may require special hardware, if the VPN is NATed. And both have their own protocol that you need to passthrough along with certain TCP ports.
<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Macmac

 

Dear freeman,

First, I admit what you just said bought tears to my eyes. Sooner or later, I must confront these issues. For now, my plan is to narrow my usage to wifi areas and my Dell.

I will be travelling to the mainland soon. Staying usually at nice and (too)expensive hotels. Sometimes only for two nights to 3 weeks. So far, all my internet business communication have been secured using my Powerbook and Brickhouse(firewall) - no conflicts with any VPN arrangement (I do not know if they actually existed). All using cable or dial up.

There is no window's equivalent of Brickhouse. So, my late Dell700m will be a virgin without anykind of protection except for the trial version of Norton's stuff. But anyway, thank you to all. I believe I was given the best info available from people in the know. The choices given (Panda is still favored) will get my undivided attention.

Thanks again freeman.
Sincerely,
macmac

 

One thing I might add, if you don't already know panda.
It has a built in firewall, they use the Sygate firewall. I found it to be better and less load on the CPU than zone alarm and I've been a big fan of zone alarm since version 2.xx. Give it a try as well.

Jack

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

Sorry, but I am going to throw in one more option.

There is always SystemSuite from VCom. It is very highly rated as a utility program, does not hog system resources even though it lives in your quick launch area, and comes with a firewall and virus scanner, amonst other things (defrag, registry cleaner/fixer, backup utility, etc).

If you are just getting into Windows computers, this seems to me to be a decent starting point.

 

I thought I got all I needed. Now that I checked back with this post and found more info! However, due to Roadrunner's failure earlier yesterday (line was down for 3 hrs), I could not use my plastic to make a purchase - divine intervention?

I now have gone on a quest to look at the freebies but Panda still has a lot going for it. So far, my friend's Tr3 Vaio shows no problems with Titanium...

Thanks again!
A Most Sincere and red-eyed,
macmac

 

I have also switched to Panda 7 on my desktop after McAfee pretty much made it useless and I have been pleased. Now I think about getting a new AV after the Norton temporary license expires on my new Notebook. The new Panada Titanium 2005 is supposed to have a firewall built in, is that the same scaled down Sygate that is included in the Platinum versions? I am using Sygate Pro and would prefer an AV that is compatible.

 

I use AVG free edition and seems to work really well, scan all my emails from outlook and update every two or three dates! and just use zonealarm for firewall!

Spyware is the real program thatz hard to control. Before, I use Adaware/Spybot and scan it weekly. Get tons of spyware! but than I switch to firefox as my main browser, man, I get like only one or two spyware a week!! got to switch people!

Compaq Presario R3210CA with AMD Athlon-M XP2800+, 256MB DDR SODIMM 333Mhz, 40GB Fujisu, 15inch XGA TFT, NVidia GeForce 4 with 32MB

 

But no question though, Norton was satisfactory, but i didnt need all the stuff internet security had. But make sure you get XP SP2 with the firewall and stuff, thats why all you need is an antivirus and an antispyware.

 

Well i've used both Norton and McAfee, and I have to tell you, McAfee is A LOT better, even though both slow down the computer horribly when doing scans, but you should be able to fix that if you have HT or HyperTransport (i would think). I highly suggest McAfee, even though you had a bad first experience with it. I've had to ask them some questions and the Instant Messaging support people solved it in a snap. Mainly got it to not have one mcafee and one norton, because i got the Anti-Spyware too, but the Anti-virus even came with this free program called Quick Clean, that rids the computer of unneccessary files. Also comes with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

 

I have been using Panda for a few days now (after I got rid of Norton, my boot-up time dropped from 54 to 37 seconds!), and it's working really, reall well

except.....

Has anyone else using Panda noticed that it takes twice as long to load web pages? Doesn't matter what it is -- Yahoo, Gmail, my own webpage -- it just *crawls*....

Is Zone Alarm any better about this?

 

I use Nod 32 and it works great for me!!!

 

I use Symantec Anti-Virus Corp Edition on my computer and it's great. Finds everything out there and also scans for spyware (limited, but still scans for it). Never had any issues with it.

-Vb-

 

i use NOD32 too, just switched from norton and this uses far less memory, comp feels faster the time it takes to log in has decreased significantly, the time to open folders and files is less and the update system doesnt have that "Time-Out" which keeps interrupting liveupdate

 

Right now I'm using Avast. I would use Norton but it hogs so much of the available resources. Avast doesn't take much and the scans are decent.

I don't feel like it's getting everything, though. I want to either buy Panda or PC-Cillin. It looks like PC-Cillin is higher ranked, but I don't want a firewall.

Hopefully you can install it without the firewall. I hate having multiple firewalls. To me, Windows Firewall is good enough. I'm behind a hardware firewall anyway.

 

I use antivir ( http://www.free-av.com/). It has caught viruses on my plagued old desktop that was until then running Norton (curse that crap). It seems lean and light and devoid of useless options. And it's free.

 

NOD32.

It consistantly ranks at the top in detecting new and current threats, it has very low resource usage, and you get updates sometimes up to 4 or 5 times a day.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=323306

Sandeep