Finally Installed an Antivirus Program

Cant depend of my firewall anymore. Especially when using P2P programs. I managed to keep my PC clean though, the Scanner didnt detect any viruses and I havn't used one since... well I dont think I ever have. Firstly was Norton, sucked... bad. Then was AVG, it was ok but didnt like its speed, used too much memory. Tried Nod32, great protection, too much memory -- around 30mb. Then I tried BitDefender, freakin' awesome. Low memory usage -- less than 5mb for all the services (Scanner, Adaware, E-mail). Love the program and I'm thinkin of buying it.

Which scanners do you fullaz' use. Whats the performance like on it?

Avast baby!

AVG - two licenses! :)

Avast is useless. Hogs memory too.

Why is Avast useless? I have used it for a while now and find it perfectly capable. Honestly though, I would like to know why you think this.

Jason.

Eliminate your P2P software and you will have 99% less problems with virus.

AVG standard is pretty limited (can't exlude folders for example). Avast seems OK.

For one, Avast was horribly slow to startup. So many background tasks that thing runs. It was eating around 30+ mb of memory, and in my books, that could be better used storing half of one of Quake 4's uncompressed textures.

I use AVG myself but even still ... Is 30MB actually a problem? What kind of ancient machines are you people using? :)

My machines fairly moderate in terms of hardware (3800 AMD64, 1.5GB Memory, 6600GT, 200GB HDD). Its just that I dont like the idea of that much wasted memory when I know there are better solutions out there.

1.5GB and you're concerned over 30MB that Windows will swap out if it needs it. OK. :)

Its not the fact Im overly concerned with 30mb of memory used, its that there could possibly be a better solution that would use less, hence windows not having to swap as much, which means less stuttering in games where objects are streamed from the HDD, like GTA.

Sucks to Antivirus software. Follow any p2p sessions with a scan and leave it at that. No need to have it running in the background.

It works for me!

AVG. It is so much more stable than Norton and McAfee (and no annoying splash screens and such)... Plus you can't beat the price (free for personal use, with some minor limitations like Grey mentioned above)

AVG. Its free. Which is good. Oh, and it works. Which is also good.

It works better than most of its commercial brethren, which is also good.

I guess when you have a laptop with 3.6 Ghz, 2 Gigs Ram and a 256 MB video card you don't care about whatever memory Avast uses ;)

Plus when I download stuff (a lot of times from users on this site) it will let me know right away if there is a virus attached, so it's been really useful.

Avast rocks..

Yeah Ok, I installed Avast again and disabled a few of its more memory hungry modules such as Web/P2P/Internet Mail. That bought memory usage down quite alot and theres still the Realtime scanner running in the background so I'm happy.

I've used AVG for years because it stayed out of my face most of the time, and seemed to work just fine.

In more recent times, the fact that it seemed compelled to tell me every single time that it had just updated itself started to get a bit stale. Then, because it kept on being in my face like that, I noticed that according to AVG at least, virus writers don't work on the weekends, because there were no updates on the weekends. Or perhaps there could be another underlying message in that behaviour.

Yesterday AVG announced that it was about to stop working and I had to go download a new version within a certain time scale. Well yes, that's not unreasonable of them either, but when I got to the page it said I had to go to, I was left with the perception that the terms under which it was to be used had changed, and changed to the point where I am seriously wondering about giving something else a try.

Something a bit less slick and spun looking might sit alongside my growing conerns a little more comfortably. In short I was left wondering about their sincerity, since their new approach suggested to me that it might be a wiser move.

I'm not sure what I might try out next, only that I quite probably will. Of course I'll have to be able to have complete confidence in it, whatever it might turn out to be.

I also recommend Avast!. Always the first when it comes to free antivirus supporting beta OSs =]

I actually installed it on two machines earlier.

One went pretty good. (laptop)

The other is giving me a hard time with what looks very much like a false positive (AVG gives the same file a clean bill of health). Also windows XP Pro SP2 don't recognise it as being there on that machine.

That's a bit odd because that's exactly what is on the laptop as well!

Not sure what to make of all that. A bit disappointed with both right now really.

Keep in mind that Avast, AVG, and others aren't that expensive for the "pro" version, and if I recall correctly a one-time fee covers 2 or 3 years of pro version license.

Augen:

Yes, you're quite right. not too bad at all in pricing.

But right now and until they both behave well and agree over this probable false positive then I'm thinking both are asking more than they might really be worth.

Actually, I don't even need them to agree really; If one would just prove the other to be wrong I'd then at least have a basis for perhaps having more confidence in one of them. <sigh>

I use F-Secure. It's incredibly cheap but it's hugely effective.

Running tasks appear to use a lot of RAM but in reality, if total available RAM runs low, it releases it in a very friendly manner. I do not have to unload it to play RAM hungry games (I've 'only' got 1G total).

I'm using the AVG Pro + Firewall edition. I'm totally in love with it. I've also got a 2 year subscription to updates and will continue using grisoft products untill something better comes out, which isn't likely.

:)

One plus point I did notice when trying out Avast was how quick it scanned when compared with AVG (and it was set as far in depth as it would go too).

However that speed does not also mean it gets it (enough) right in what it finds sadly, it was quite impressive to see though.

Got rid of any antivirus programs and opted for a more simpler, resident protection system. Windows Defender!!!111 Yay, see how it goes :P

Keep us posted!

Not sure it fully replaces an AV though, it mentions "spyware", and as I understand things, that leaves a largish potential loophole depending on which dictionary you might use.

Not got time to read up on it all today, there's yards of text there, and it does not seem overly keen to get to the point either! Maybe tomorrow.

Seems to work alright. Couldnt remove this annoying browser hijacking that kept opening popup windows. Removed it manually with hijackthis. Moved the security settings up a notch to prevent it automagically installing.