I was told norton sucks out cpu power, and to use avg 8??

MalakitheMostHi · Post by **MalakitheMostHi** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:14 pm

any input on this??
Thanks a million in advance.
malaki

dallas! · Post by **dallas!** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:28 pm

I prefer AVG, it's free for starters and it works! Can't comment on anything else.

dallas!

NorthernMonkey · Post by **NorthernMonkey** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:36 pm

http://www.eset.com/ - best one i've used so far, don't even notice it running.

oddstep · Post by **oddstep** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:06 pm

I was using Norton 2006 untill recently and I had to switch it off in msconfig before I felt safe playing in front of the public. I've just moved onto to whatever is the latest Norton paranoia-ware, seems to be less of a cpu hit - but I'll still turn it off for live performance.
AVG is good, I suspect I'm a victim of Norton's hassle messages.

jonathanm · Post by **jonathanm** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:41 pm

I used to do tech support for PCs until a year ago, and put AVG on literally hundreds of computers - most often removing norton first. AVG is definitely a more lightweight app.

As an example, I had a client with a photo processing store which uses pc based kiosks - the type where the customer chooses their own photos to print from memory cards, cds, bluetooth etc. I had AVG installed. I got an email from him a couple of days ago because he had virus problem his new so called tech couldn't fix..this guy had removed avg and installed norton. My client said there was a noticeable performance hit the kiosks ran about 20% slower.

I've just been remoting into his network to fix the problems and put avg back, and the performance is back.

Bear in mind that the performance hit varies depending on what you do with your computer. In his case, the kiosks are constantly opening and moving around large jpg files, and that means a lot of scanning going on at all times.

If you remove norton, make sure you remove the other symantec bits from add/remove programs ...livereg and liveupdate. It sometimes doesnt uninstall properly and you need to use a special uninstall tool from symantecs website, or remove it manually from the registry.

Jonathan

NorthernMonkey · Post by **NorthernMonkey** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:12 am

AVG definitely offers the best FREE protection, but NOD32 (ESET) has the best detection rate of any commercial anti-virus and constantly wins awards...

http://www.eset.com/company/awards.php

If you want the best for free, get AVG; if you want the best protection, get NOD32.

kaffein · Post by **kaffein** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:27 am

NorthernMonkey wrote:AVG definitely offers the best FREE protection, but NOD32 (ESET) has the best detection rate of any commercial anti-virus and constantly wins awards...

http://www.eset.com/company/awards.php

If you want the best for free, get AVG; if you want the best protection, get NOD32.

.

jonathanm · Post by **jonathanm** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:48 am

lol....

http://www.avg.com/awards

but yeah, I've stuck with AVG (free, paid and network versions) because I know it and it was simpler for me to use the same product across my home clients and business clients. NOD32 is top rate...Kaspersky is great too. Actually Norton's virus detection is very good, it's everything else about it that's crap.

Another good free one is Avast!

seriously though, no AV software is 100%...also, false positives are issues with all progs. So really it's subjective too - There really is no BEST program. whatever you install, you should also use one of the free online scanners every now and then - housecall & bitdefender are 2 which will actually remove threats. There are others which will detect, but you then have to buy the product to remove, or remove manually..

If you have a file you suspect, you can upload it here, and it'll scan it with all the major virus engines...

http://www.virustotal.com/

lola · Post by **lola** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:46 am

+43232423423 for nod32

This is one of the best not to give you false positives

NorthernMonkey · Post by **NorthernMonkey** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 1:51 am

Most of those AVG awards are for the free addition - NOD32 is considered to be the best AV as it has the highest detection rate, AVG in comparison is quite low. AVG is popular because it's the best free AV.

blank · Post by **blank** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:15 pm

Nod 32 all the way

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:33 pm

(full disclosure, I work for a company that sells AV software - take a wild guess which...)

It depends on what risk you are really trying to protect.

AVG is just Antivirus. Antivirus alone is only effective at stopping roughly 60% of all malware. If you surf the web on your music machine just installing AV and no other security only addresses a part of the problem.

To secure a computer on the internet also requires behavior anomaly detection, host based intrusion prevention, and personal firewall.

AVG is only a small fraction of this. Whereas Norton Internet Security is a suite that does all that and more.

I agree that in the past Norton was a beast. Most people did remove it in favor of AVG because of the memory and CPU hit you describe but this is outdated information. Version 9 is the fastest on the market.

http://review.zdnet.com/internet-securi ... 46586.html

cotdagoo · Post by **cotdagoo** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:57 pm

norton just plain sucks.. nevermind cpu power, hard drive space, memory, etc..

get yourself nod32 or avg

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:58 pm

cotdagoo wrote:norton just plain sucks.. nevermind cpu power, hard drive space, memory, etc..

get yourself nod32 or avg

that's just plain outdated information.

jonathanm · Post by **jonathanm** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 7:09 pm

tempus3r wrote:Version 9 is the fastest on the market.

My post near the start was about replacing NIS 9 with AVG 8, just this week. So that doesn't tally with the testing my client and I did.

for spyware/adware I use Spybot & Adaware.

J