[howardpatrick]

I would like to know?

What do you know, from experience, facts, not what you may have heard, what is the best antivirus program out there?

I now use Avast 4.7, takes forever to do a full scan. I was thinking about purchasing Kaspersky 7.0.

Any comments, should I purchase Kaspersky, is it better than Avast?

Thank you for your help.B-)

[Car54]

Hi howardpatrick, you ask a "loaded question" as you'll probably get a variety of answers due to personal preferences. Like you, I used Avast 4.7 free for awhile, but went back to BitDefender, after Avast (in my case) picked up some false positives that even the multi scanner web sites didn't show the submitted file as infected. (I stopped the scan after 26 companies engines showed negative result for a virus) The Virus Chest sometimes worked, and sometimes didn't, in not alerting me to the "infected" files I placed in it.

So anyway, IMO I think Kaspersky is one of the top 3-4 of AV software. When I tried their security suite last year, I had troubles getting on line and I couldn't figure it out, even after trying some solutions from various web sites, so I uninstalled it. You could try the free trial and see what you think.

I think there are pros and cons for them all, but I personally like BitDefender, is it the best as far as a suite is concerned, no, but I'm not going into the dark allies of the internet, so I'm not to worried about B.D.s "short comings". It's a clean, light,easy to use, all the way to more tweekable, software. They also have a free trial version. Don't get me wrong B.D. AV stand alone is very good, just like Kasperskys AV.

Here's a link to some users feedback for Kaspersky

Here's a link to BitDefender trial version.

[Number3124]

While I can't speak for Kaspersky av7 Kaspersky av6 is pretty good. For the six months I've had it I haven't noticed any significant slowdown due the AV. On the other hand I had Bit Defender v_10 for about four months and my system was almost unusable.

[Car54]

I had v10, but now am running B.D. 2008 on 3 systems (2 XP, and 1 Vista) w/o any problems. :-)

[Number3124]

So then that's why everybody says BD's so great.

[TechyGuy]

I have had good experiences with Bitdefender and TrendMicro, but Avast works fine on my laptop.

[Car54]

Like you, I had problems with version 10, somewhere around June-Aug.? of last year I went into BSOD a couple of times, in the blue screen windows showed me what was causing the problem, it was B.D.s auto update module. Having done a web search, I found out I wasn't alone, and after unchecking the auto update feature, it stopped the BSOD "feature" :^0 of B.D.

[Number3124]

I tried that,but it didn't work. It turned out to be the proactive defiance was interfering with spybot's tee timer.

[SpiritWind]

Hi Howard :

Being a Volunteer "Helper" on the Avast Support Forums, I chose their product primarily for its
"real-time" protection ( 7 "Providers/Shields ) and its EXCELLENT Support Forums, NOT for its
"Detection Rate" . Avast's "Philosophy" appears to be erring on the side of caution, since many
Items "detected" can be either legitimate or malware, depending on its "location". IF unsure as to
"quality" of the "detection", that is what their Support Forums are there to answer . I have run ONLY
1 Avast Scan in the last 5 months, relying on my antiSPYWARE/antiTROJAN programs to detect
and deal with the serious malware, except possible rootkits. For that I occasionally run a
RootkitRevealer Scan .

If you decide to "switch", I recommend you visit and read through some of the Threads of the Support
Forums of your "candidates" and read through each product's "FAQ"s . Would recommend you view
the testing results at http://www.av-comparatives.org , particularly their "Retrospective/ProActive Test"
Results of May 2007, where NOD32 was the clear "Winner" .

I am curious as to what, SPECIFICALLY, are the Avast "false-positive(s)" you experienced !?

[piyushsingh]

BD 2008 was ranked 1st in the cnet reviews with fastest boot times and best detection , i have dumped my mcafee and currently using a 30 day trial of BD 2008 and without any problems.nod32 was the 2nd best in their reiew but it lacks anti-spyware support.

[Car54]

Nice point SpiritWind, good "real-time" protection is the best defense, cp. to "detection". Stopping the spyware, malware, viruses, before they get into your system, and then are "detected", after the fact
Your also right in that the Avast forum help is excellent, I had a couple of helpful responses in a matter of around 10-15 minutes, almost as good as PCWorld's :-)

[HeroofAvalon]

I'm quite partial to a large mix of unrelated, FREE products to create the "perfect defense". In terms of anti-virus, I use only AVIRA AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic nowadays. I used to use Avast! and AVG before that, but when my computer started acting weird, I tried different things, and AVIRA on my desktop found 490 trojans that both AVG and Avast! missed.

Just make sure you don't pay for your security software. There's simply no need to when just-as-good or better products exist that do the same thing, and don't cost a dime.

[Adama]

Hi, howard. I've been using Trend MicroAntiVirus for about 7 months now and it's working great for me. It's not free, but sometimes you find it on sale at Best Buy or Circuit City, or other stores.

[lilxkid24]

Ive tried Kaspersky sky suite and it has a bit too much stuff there firewall web protector etc, took me a while just to configed it to what i wanted. There is no best protection really, its all really up to what you want, but there are ones that suck really badly, for example ones NOT TO GET are Norton and Mcaffe. The reason takes avast a long time to do a scan is either you have lots of stuff on your hdd or your doing a very thorough scan of your files.

[snorg]

I use Avast 4.7 free and I like it.
If it does give a false positive thats no biggy, thats lots better than a false negative.

As far a speed goes I dont see it being any slower than the others.