Light yet powerful antivirus

i have been out of the virus protection scene for about 2 years (mac purchase).
also this time there are more things to consider since it is my first laptop (HEL80). i am aware some programs may be efficient yet very heavy especially during gaming.

please suggest a light and efficient solution

thank you

 

Many of the users here would suggest AVG Free. This is a great antivirus solution if you're not willing to spend and it's also very light on system resources.

On the other hand, there is NOD32 which is arguably the best antivirus out there but costs $$.

 

AVG and avast, both free are the cream of the crop when it comes to good antivirus programs that run very light.

 

how would AVG and Avast compare to NOD32 or other antivirus programs that cost money.
particularly in terms of protection efficiency and database updates

 

Pay-antivirus programs almost always edge out their free counterparts in terms of protection and features.

 

on that note

anyone here has Kaspersky 6.0 Internet Security or BitDefender 9 Internet Security ?

after reading http://toptenreviews.com/ and http://www.virusbtn.com/index one can assume those blow away competition in terms of efficiency/features/updates

they are indeed pricey i wouldn't want to pay $130 for a three year license to find out that the application eats up a big chunk of resources.

anyone ?

 

ramian is right. Paid-for antivirus solutions will always outperform the free ones. It all depends on whether you want to pay or not.

I used Kaspersky in the past and was very satisfied with it's performance. The reason I switched was that it kept on caching certain files over and over, taking up a huge amout of storage space on my HD. I tried to take it off but was unsuccessful.

Cannot say much about BitDefender.

Right now I'm using ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite, which offers all-round protection form viruses and malware as well as it's legendary software firewall.

From my own research, NOD32 is probably the lightest and most efficient of all paid for AV solutions and shouldn't slow down your gaming experience.

 

Silent, when was the last time you used Kaspersky ?
whats "huge amounts of storage" ?
and was it good on resource management ?

 

That was just over a year ago.

Kaspersky caches files on your system deemed to be safe from viruses to improve scanning performance. After a while, the continuous caching of these files takes up a considerable amount of space on a hard drive (in GB). Of course if you have a large HD, this shouldn't affect you.

It was great on resource management, probably second to NOD32 from my experience.

 

you have been very helpful i will do further research about the caching myself.

would you say the following is fair information http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
extremely short reviews are available as well

 

That's a good idea.

Personally, I don't trust TopTenReviews. For reviews and tests I turn to:

Virus Bulletin
ICSA Labs Certification
Checkmark Level
AV Comparatives

And finally, forums like this! The information that users present based on their experiences and research is, without a doubt, invaluable.

Good luck.

 

I agree with Silent. I don't look at reviews. There was a recent Security Suite review done by PC World Magazine.

In that report they rated Norton as the best of bunch. Well come to find out that the reporting was skewed and they didn't actually test correctly, leaving out critcal testing procedures. So much for the review.

I personally go by word of mouth and by reading forums such as this and others. I then make my best educated choice.

I currently use NOD32 and have found this, IMHO, to be the best anti-virus available. It has an extremely small foot print as well as daily updates (sometimes two a day).

 

thanks for the input

 

At one point, I had two AV's sitting on my VAIO - Norton Internet Security 2004 and AVG. I had installed AVG when my Norton Internet Security 2004 ran out of subscription.

The problem I had with AVG was, no doublt it did detect a virus on my system but was unable to delete the infected file. It kept on saying that it couldnt delete the infected file.

When I ran Norton AV scan, it turned out that my system was clean.
(May be Norton coluldnt detect the virus becuase of my out of date subscription. So there is no point in blaming Norton.)

AVG kept on flashing a Virus Alert, but I was unable to do anything with it.

So eventually, I decided to format my system and reinstall everything back to normal. Big pain in the neck. Took almost 2+ hours.

That was the time when I decided that I will never ever go for another free AV's again. Got hold of Norton Internet Security 2006 and life has been better since then.