I recently uninstalled Norton Security on my personal machine because it used a lot of system resources, and it would do an additional step everytime I tried installed an application or ran a service that tried to establish a connection to the Internet. Do you run antivirus or do you have a better solution for antivirus software than Norton Security? Related Questions: | |||||||||
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You should always use antivirus software and a firewall etc. AVG is free (as in beer) and very good. | ||||
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MY machine, no. My family's machine, you better believe it! :) Wife can't get past using IE.... I use AVGFree. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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I've used ESET NOD32 for quite some years. I can recommend it. Install it, tell it to only mark infected emails and only to bug you with messages that actually need intervention, and forget about it. I love it =) Anyways, you should have one installed I believe. You will be happy you do, the day it suddenly jumps up and has stopped something. For example because a friend of you has gotten infected and has started sending out stuff to people in their contact list. And you accidentally click it, or something like that... Better to be safe than sorry =) | ||||
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I use Avast at home (free for home use). It works very simply and doesn't get in the way. | ||||
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If you are a professional system admin or developer, you should have enough knowledge to set your machine up safely and should not need any anti virus. I've not had any antivirus installed for a couple of years, but I've always had UAC enabled in vista. However, any non technical IT friends I always mandate having anti virus installed! I've had the pleasure of cleaning up friends machines who have accidentally strayed onto web sites they may not like admitting having visited! What I've noticed is that people who don't understand security have disabled UAC because 'it is annoying'. I've never been really annoyed with UAC - it comes up when I expect it, unless something else dodgy is happening! So - for general users of this site, the answer should be no. For visitors for this site - the answer should be yes and look at questions about free anti virus software. | |||||
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Windows Update: On Firewall: Off/None AntiVirus: None Last time i had a virus was back in the IE6 days before i switched to Firebird. I run Windows Vista which is very secure when you have the latest software updates. Plus i normally know what i'm doing. | |||||
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Yes I do. For a long time I didn't. I knew enough not to download just anything, and not to click on unexpected attachments. Then came that fateful day when I accidentally double clicked, when I meant to select and delete and BOOM!!! Now I don't run without one. Lots of Norton isn't necessary (like their firewall if you are already behind one). See what you can pare down. Or switch to a smaller footprint anti virus tool. | |||||
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The Security Now guys (Laporte and Gibson) recommend Avast (free) and eSet NOD32. I have used AVG Free for several years on my home PCs, and it has worked well. I have a technologically challenged wife and a teenage IM freak yet have remained infection-free. I am going to switch one of them to Avast this weekend to see if it is lighter. | ||||
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Not on my machine, I'm a Vista UAC fanboy and I curb its chafing by disabling Secure Desktop. UAC and Windows Defender (scheduled, real-time scans disabled) get me by. I prefer the limited privilege approach first (suDown for XP is cool but was a little too frustrating for me), if that's not possible then I'll go to antivirus. In my choice the performance factor is huge because otherwise it's like installing malware itself (degraded system performance? no thanks), Jeff Atwood got it right in Choosing Anti-Anti-Virus Software. | ||||
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I recently switched from AVG free to Avast (also free) - I tried up-voting the Avast answer but I've only just joined the beta so no up-voting possible just yet! I moved from AVG to Avast on the advice of GeeksToGo, which I found during a recent malware issue. They say AVG "...has long been a favorite of this site and others. However, their detection rates are consistently testing at the bottom of these free antivirus applications. They've also had a number of problems with their update servers recently. While AVG is still a good choice, it's at the bottom of our recommendations." Avast has real-time filtering, but you can turn this off and just schedule a scan if you don't want to take the performance hit. | ||||
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We don't use Anti Virus on our company workstations - we all run Macs, and we're all pretty sophisticated power users with various high levels of security know-how. I don't use Anti Virus on my home systems either. I use NoScript on Firefox which prevents drive-by downloads, and I always check MD5sums of downloads, or only download from sources I trust. That said, I don't download a lot of software anyway. I have my wife trained to use NoScript with Firefox, and she doesn't download anything without asking me first. I haven't had a virus infection on any computer I've used in over 12 years - when I got an infected floppy disk from a classmate in a college project. User training is the best Anti Virus you can implement in your company, and your family household. It is well worth the time-cost, and will save you money since you don't have to buy AV products. | ||||
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I run Clam AntiVirus on my Linux Server to scan all mail arriving from On my kids' and wife's machines (all WinXP), I run AVG Free. On my laptop (which dual boots Fedora 10 and WinXP SP3) I don't currently have any antivirus, but I do occasionally scan for spyware. | ||||
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I use Norton 360 - works fine on XP but have had some problems with Vista. If you have kids, you absolutely need antivirus / firewall protection. | ||||
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I really like COMODO not only as a virus checker but as a great firewall | ||||
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Avast, AVG and NOD are quite resource-friendly, never had any problems with them. | ||||
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F-Secure Bit Defender ESET 32 are pretty much the most thorough and best out there. Norton seems to be seen as a disease by most people. | |||||
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Yes, but only because my company requires AV on any machine connecting to the VPN =) I like ClamWin because it asks for attention less than the other free ones. | ||||
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No, I haven't used any antivirus software for a few years. I do use a firewall only to monitor outbound connections and I reinstall a clean OS every few months. It gives me a chance to try something new. | ||||
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For the Windows people, SysInternals has enough programs that you can become a human virus scanner! It's so much cooler than running AVG.. I do keep AVG on the families PCs, a firewall and plenty of spyware removal software. | |||||
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I run Symantec Endpoint on all my home computers, even my own. Viruses and trojans manage to sneak past me once in a while. Endpoint is far superior to the Norton product line and uses very little resources. For the most part it just works; LiveUpdate keeps the definitions up-to-date in the background and there is no subscription period to worry about. I have the scan settings configured very secure to deal with malware automatically, so users don't bother me when something is caught. This is going to be controversial, but based on my experience in the field, Endpoint (and it's predecessor) is the best antivirus solution. When installed on a computer that previously was running another antivirus product, 99% of the time it will find something that was missed by that other antivirus product. I'm not a Symantec employee and get nothing for saying this. Note also that in any antivirus comparison article, Symantec's corporate antivirus products are never mentioned or tested, only the Norton product. Endpoint catches all forms of malware, so there is no need for me to run Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, etc. except in rare circumstances when a computer is seriously infected (and then usually the solution is HijackThis or a good reformatting). | ||||
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I guess I feel a bit jaded by AV software. Running it always requires sacrificing precious system resources and inevitably you will be infected with that new piece of malware that your AV just doesn't cover, whether it be spyware, browser hijacker, whatever. Recently we had 2 fully patched XP Pro machines running McAfee 8.5i and were still infected. I will always run AV on work machines just because, but for my personal home machine....nope...been running it for 2 years now without any mishaps. EDIT - I should mention that I have been around the block. I feel like I could comfortably walk through the minefield that is the Internet and return home safely with both legs intact. EDIT (6/25/2009) - OK, last weekend one of my home machines was totally destroyed by a virus. Not running AV may have been bad advice. I have almost 200 movies on this machine that I am now afraid of....how embarrassing.... | ||||
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Absolutely. Computing without antivirus is... there isn't any analogy that I can come up with to express how unsafe and wrong-minded it is. Even if you're a Mac, use one... just because there aren't many Mac virii around now doesn't mean it'll always be that way. | ||||
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I do not. I run Ubuntu on my own machine and do not require an AV, as far as I'm concerned. My wife's laptop is WinXP and is protected by Avast. | ||||
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Panda Cloud is well worth checking out. I use it on all my home 32-bit systems and it works a charm. It's lightweight and quick, doesn't get in your face, and is of course free.
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Yes, I use antivirus on my home computer. I used to use AVG, but when version 8 came out recently (which used more system resources and slowed my computer down more), and it added that "link scanner" component, I dropped it and went with ESET NOD32 (after a lengthy search), even though I have to pay for it. | ||||
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No antivirus. The only Windows boxes I have are VMs that I revert back to a snapshot as soon as I am done using them. I do use iptables on all my machines however. | ||||
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Yes. I haven't had any issues with the products I use on the machines I run and the machines the family use. I have NAV on three and Avast on three. Nothing on the virtual machines but they're not connected to the real world anyway. I don't see using AV products as an issue one way or the other. | ||||
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Given that all my personal workstations or laptop are running Linux I don't worry about antivirus on it as much. For any Windows machines I take care of I usually install Norton 360 as I've seen stuff get past McAfee and other AV software. Norton 360 also has a nice low CPU usage engine which runs all checks (antivirus, anti-phishing, malware and system optimization) in the background whenever the system is idle for more then a configurable amount of time. This works nicely for family members who I don't want to have them touch but don't want to deal with their systems getting buggered and having to spend hours correcting it. Norton 360 updates every 5-15 minutes so as soon as updates are released they are quickly added to the system and available on the next idle check run. | ||||
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I have a Mac :) So I don't, even though I know there are options available. | ||||
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