Sixteen Antivirus Solutions Put to the Test

For the record, Norton has been excellent since the '09 version came out. Anything before has been subpar, and deserving of the horrible image they've cultivated. AVG has been bloated and crap since version 8, and Avira has always been about detection and prevention, not cleanup. Cleanup has been its constant sore spot, but who cares if you don't get infected in the first place?

Originally Posted by Limahl

Then apparently you didn't see post #5 above.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/compa...ews/main-tests

No I did see the link, the article is still a poorly written joke and the chart does nothing to support the title of "Battle of the anti-virus: What is the best software?" When he doesn't even answer his own question, never mind answer all the other questions that people have when it comes to purchasing an AV program.

The thing about Security Essentials is that when Microsoft Anti-Spyware was released a few years back, it was great at finding and removing spyware as well. Once it came out of beta, it sucked, it was worse than Spybot or Ad-Aware.

Originally Posted by Tolyngee

NAV got a "good/good"???

Maybe they're assuming the non-typical scenario that norton isn't a 2-year-old trial version that hasn't been updated in 1.5 years? That's the natural habitat for norton.

I don't know, maybe if it's actually up to date it can be decent.

i'm sad to see AVG is average, i guess thats what I get for a free scanner

Nah, plenty of good free AVs out there, AVG is just running a little behind atm.

They've got additional tests for On-demand and Retrospective/Proactive tests. You can't base the judgement on this one test. AV-C did this test to merely show how well AVs can remove malware based on what remains and what is removed after infection. You've got to read the others in addition to this to make your own decisions with regards to what's "best".

AV-C isn't there to decide which AV you MUST get. It gives you the data/results of the tests and you decide. If you're unable to draw conclusions from what's available to suit your needs, that's your problem.

Latest on-demand results:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/image...c_report23.pdf

You decide on your AV of choice depending on what you want. So we know Norton/Microsoft are capable of fully removing traces of malware, but does that matter to you? What matters to you? Will you sacrifice detection rates for less false positives or will you try to maximize detection rates/speed and accept the possibility of above "average" false positives? Are you looking for something free? Will you go for prevention (based on detection early on) or counter-measures after infection(removal)? I personally feel detection rates matter and catching things sooner is much better than being infected and having to remove it later on. Might as well just image to a clean copy a few days before if something managed to get in.

Btw, Norton 2009 >> all other previous Norton products. Stop being ignorant especially when one of the "highly regarded" AVs such as ESET/Kaspersky managed to get only 97.2%/94.7% respectively whereas Norton got 98.4% (caught 17895 more samples than NOD32 did). It's much less bloated and ran fine in a Vista VM.

Ugh...no edit button, was supposed to include the following as well.

Proactive/retroactive:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/image...c_report22.pdf

Everyone saying how the test isn't very good clearly aren't familiar with AV-comparatives. They've been doing tests for years and most of the things you guys are complaining about are covered in other tests. This data was merely a subset of the large number of things they test for on a regular basis. (i.e. Scan performance, heuristics, detection rates, etc.)

So who paid for that research? Microsoft or Norton?

In my experience of fixing home and small business PCs, these two products are hopeless at protecting people from the real live threats out there

Get over it, both products have changed since previous versions, as stated below:

Originally Posted by entropism

For the record, Norton has been excellent since the '09 version came out. Anything before has been subpar, and deserving of the horrible image they've cultivated. AVG has been bloated and crap since version 8, and Avira has always been about detection and prevention, not cleanup. Cleanup has been its constant sore spot, but who cares if you don't get infected in the first place?

Sure Norton was bad before, but from what i recall, it wasn't really bad, it had a high rate of removal, but the software was just bloated and slow.\

New test all over the net and even on the actual AV comparative site, if you read it, shows Norton and MS are actually good products, so stop putting down a company because of a name, and actually try their new products, or at least view reviews on them and dont assume they paid for the reviews.

I have been running MSE for a few weeks now, seems good, it's a light program. It replaced AVG. I would want to see how good it is about actually preventing things from getting there in the first place.

I tend to just avoid clicking on things I shouldn't and not going to websites of dubious nature...

I've got to seriously doubt this test if Symantec and Microsoft products come out on top. That's pretty much the opposite of what most other research has shown.

Originally Posted by douglasb

I've got to seriously doubt this test if Symantec and Microsoft products come out on top. That's pretty much the opposite of what most other research has shown.

If you would actually take the time to read the entire website you would find out that they do thorough testing on all antivirus programs and that again this was just a subset of tests that they did on these programs.

Norton's current AV program works well. I've been using it and it does not take up as mnay resources or is as bloated as the previous versions.

Sorry, thumbs down for this review...
Kaspersky is the best antivirus out there, no questions asked...

Originally Posted by Seemund

Sorry, thumbs down for this review...
Kaspersky is the best antivirus out there, no questions asked...

You ignore non-biased testing, and then put opinion out there as fact?

Originally Posted by criccio

You ignore non-biased testing, and then put opinion out there as fact?

HOW you can be SO sure this is non-biased testing?

Originally Posted by Seemund

HOW you can be SO sure this is non-biased testing?

Are you not familiar with AV-Comparatives.org?

Them VS. some dude on the internet...

Originally Posted by Zoogle

I tend to just avoid clicking on things I shouldn't and not going to websites of dubious nature...

with the way known websites have been comprimsed, doesnt matter if you think your safe, i wish people would get off this mentality that only 'questionable' websites can expose you.