In spirit, I’m with Erik, but I’m using McAfee Enterprise 7.1 at the moment. If I didn’t need to have the license due to work, I’d probably be using AVG.
I really hate AV software on principle. I view it as a sort of “tax-ware”. You don’t want to buy it or pay a subscription for it and it slows you down, but ultimately most need it to save yourself form your own stupidity. It’s in effect a price you pay for the Internet.
I don’t use Anti Virus software mainly for the reasons Drachen indicated. Then again, I am the type that never buys product insurance or extended warranties. My data is not THAT critical and I usually back up the most needed stuff anyway or sync it to another PC. Problem solved. No worries. ( I hope) :ph34r:
I was a non-anti-virus guy for years, last year my mom grabbed a virus on her PC. I used her shared folder on her PC to copy one file, turns out I got infected.
Since then i’ve used anti-virus software…since I am not the only one using my network.
[quote author=“TruthSeeker”]I don’t use Anti Virus software mainly for the reasons Drachen indicated. Then again, I am the type that never buys product insurance or extended warranties. My data is not THAT critical and I usually back up the most needed stuff anyway or sync it to another PC. Problem solved. No worries. ( I hope) :ph34r:
I don’t buy into that at all. Remember the I love you virus? We had been kind of lax as a company with AV updates when that struck. Our merch arm got hit rather hard and all of their JPEG files for their catalogs and many of their product designs were corrupted. Yes, it was relatively easy to restore from backup, but first the infected machines had to be found and cleaned and then we had to actually had to restore all the lost data.. including stuff on local hard drives. Not fun. Lost time, lost productivity and an all around pain in the ass. We got off lucky because it didn’t permanently destroy anything.
Good points, guys. Thanks for the feedback. I do not manage or belong to a large network like you just described. I suppose as I think more on this that I should be concerned about infecting other people that could get real hurt by “passing the virus”.
Which of those AV’s uses the least amount of resources, is free, and doesn’t prevent loading new software or applications (which is annoying).
Has anyone ever heard of F-prot AV? I use it passively on my desktop at home because I do not back up my wife’s stuff. I say passivly because I will run a manual virus check every two weeks or so, and will update like once per month.
Have I mentioned yet how much I love this forum? :D
Wow, it looks like Norton rules the roost. I use Norton on my TR and McAfee on my desktop. For the most part, I like Norton although I basically have all of its features turned off except for the e-mail (in/out) checking.
Whenever I download stuff, I manually right click on them to scan them and it’s been a good balance of protection and little to no hassle or performance degradation.
McAfee has been a mixed bag. The interface is constantly nagging me and wanting to tell me everything its doing and when there are new nasty viruses. No shit sherlock! Just do your business and stop bothering me! It would be ok if you could turn it off but there doesn’t seem to be any apparent way to do it. So, I put up with it for now although I’ll probably put NAV back on the desktop…
I definitely think you need it in some capacity…just in case. I don’t know how many clients have called me to ask for help because of virus problems. And somehow, these people seem to get the nastiest ones…and it’s not uncommon for them to have a bunch of them at the same time. I ask them…did you open any attachments from people you don’t know? They say no but it’s pretty obvious they have. My favorite one so far is the one that randomly sends a NT system level command to shutdown the system in 60 seconds no matter what. It was a pain in the butt to get rid of but amusing at the same time.
I have used Norton and McAfee on both personal systems and work environments. Each of them has hassles and good points. But, when I bought my TR and found this site, I happened to see a thread on PC-cillin and decided to try it. Wow, I think this one beats the other ones hands down for ease of installation, use and no nagging. It simply alerts you when there’s a new pattern file and then automatically installs it. No fuss. No muss. It doesn’t seem to be a resource hog and it is priced reasonably.
i’ve mainly used norton and symantec. i currenlty have symantec antivirus corporate edition on my tr. even though symantec owns norton, to me symantec feels more lite than norton. dont know if its actually true or not (can anyone verify my claim?) but it does seem to use less system resources.
I have a work license for NAV with unlimited updates, so I use that. The weird thing is that occasionally a virus will pop up on the computer even though I don’t open attachments or download questionable programs. I’ve gotten some just by surfing websites with malicious ActiveX controls. On my Mac, I’ve never used AV software and have never had a problem, but I guess that’s a perk of having <5% of the market.
I’ve used PC Cillin for years, only had to pay for it once, that was when i bought it, and it automatically updates itself every single day. 8) Only had the odd virus over the last 3 years maybe. It hardly takes up any resources.
It just rules!!!
I suppose my biggest justification for no AV is that I don’t play patty-cake with e-mail. I will delete your mail if you sent me an attachment even if I know you. You basically need to make me aware that you are sending me something before I will open it. I don’t have time for dancing Easter bunnies and Elf Bowling. :xeno:
I am also anal about downloading from home and even more so about my security settings in IE. I’m sure all this helps, but I will look into some of the stuff you guys have mentioned in this thread.
I use Avast home edition, I like it worlds above NAV and the others, plus it’s free, automatically updates itself and has a nice interface.
avil software
I have been using Vcom’s System Suite for a couple of years now. It does the job and updates when it needs to, not on a set schedule. I have found viruses in files that NAV did not find to be infected. That was what convinced me. Does anybody know anything about this, or about System Suite being any good? Just curious, as it works for me…
