freedomdwarf1
Posts: 6845
Joined: 10/23/2012
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Short story:-
I used to use Sygate AV. Then moved onto ZA.
I tried both at once - damn near stalled my PC so one had to go.
I Always thought I was well covered.
Until I went to the US for 8 months.... got my first virus and it killed my PC stone dead!
I got the Corporate version of XP and re-installed that.
I discussed with my friend I was staying with (a bit of a PC whizz-kid) what he would suggest for a decent AV.
His first words were - "nothing that you download or use for free".
Why? because, despite what they tell you, it's a cut-down version to any "Pro" version you would pay for.
(ETA: Think about it for a mo.... Why ask people to pay for something that you are offering for 'free' and does the same job?? ....Or does it?? It would be commercial suicide to make both versions the same.)
Next, one of his customers phoned to say he thought he'd got a virus in his office network and his PC.
We brought his PC back and I plugged his hard drive into my PC and ran a full Norton AV scan.
I stopped it after 3 days - it had found well over 150,000 trojans, spyware, malware, hijacks and all manner of things!!
...And he was using a "paid for" version of MacAffee Internet Office security - cost him $7,500 at the time.
And since returning to the UK I have had many PC's and laptops that had MacAffee pre-installed and found many bits of malware and spyware.
So you can imagine my opinion of MacAffee! 
We also know that Norton doesn't like certain hardware. Sometimes it's great, on others, it's crap.
We spent nearly 3 months continuously monitoring the 21 PC's with various different AV's.
Upshot?? basically, all the free ones failed miserably and most only monitor incoming traffic, not outgoing.
So *if* you managed to get a virus, the AV software won't stop it spreading if it doesn't also monitor outgoing traffic.
I have a fair old mixture of 12 PC's on my home network; different hardware but essentially all WinXP Pro.
What do I use these days??
I use AVG 2013 Professional - (not the free one) on most of my machines here.
I also use MalwareBytes Pro - again, not the free version.
AVG does tend to throw up quite a few false positives. Better safe than sorry and you can always add those you know are safe to your exclusion list.
Norton is fine if it likes your hardware. If not, it's really slow and crap. I gave it a miss as the subs are expensive.
Avast, BlackIce and Kaspersky didn't do too well in my tests.
When I'm testing, I deliberately go to places with trojans and spyware and other nasty things.
And the Ms freebie (Microsoft Security Essentials)?? It seems ok. It got reasonable write-ups on quite a few forums.
I found it easy to use and doesn't impinge on my systems here.
My only comment is its slow at updating and scanning compared to MalwareBytes and AVG Pro.
On my main PC (this one), it takes nearly 2 whole days to scan my hard drives.
But... It does have over 4,000Gigs and it's pretty full - well over 8 million files.
So.... My personal recommendation would be MalwareBytes, Ms Essentials, and possibly AVG Pro.
I would never use the freebie version either.
They seem to work alongside each other fairly well - not all AV's do.
And as MG2 said - there is absolutely nothing out there that will catch everything.
I use those that seems to prove themselves and don't slow my PC down for a minimal price.
< Message edited by freedomdwarf1 -- 5/11/2013 9:03:02 AM >
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