Mega Antivirus Test

[Jiggy]

Worth a read.

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1260/

[Budfred]

Keep in mind that he is not defining what he is actually scanning and how "virus" is defined... If one program defines each file of a virus as a separate virus while another defines it as the whole infection, the numbers would look very different for each antivirus for that virus... One would say "1" virus found and the other might say "100" viruses found... I don't trust any survey like this that doesn't define the basis of the survey...

It is true that Kapersky's online scanner has been doing very well lately... Unfortunately, it will end up disabling some computers when cleaning out certain malware programs...

[deddard]

Another thing with testing AVs is the 'depth' of the scan.
some with advanced heuristics can scan further but take longer.
NOD32 has always been quick, but if you set it to scan deeply a full system scan still takes time. - it would be interesting to see which virus files were missed or picked up by each one, rather than just listing numbers.

It's also interesting to note that some AVs (including Norton) group viruses together if there is a similarity (different versions) or may throw up more definitions because they know each variant by a different name.

[Jiggy]

I need a antivirus package (free or pay) for my laptop, what do you guys recommend ?

[pop pop]

Free: AVG or Avast

Pay: NOD32 or Kapersky

[poppy]

Free: AVG or Avast

Pay: NOD32 or Kapersky
Second the motion! All in favor, say aye!

[Erik]

I am a big fan of AVG. I use it on all of my Windows computers, and install it on all the computers that I build or work on.

To me the biggest plus with a free scanner is that you don't need to worry about a subscription for updates running out. I would rather be runnning an up to date AV program that is a bit less effective than the best program that is outdated.

[Paleo Pete]

My vote goes for AVG, I've used it for over 3 years and have always liked it. Doesn't bog the machine down too much, (not nearly as much as the two big commercial programs anyway,) has never crashed or locked up, automatic updates work well and the only time I managed to grab a virus it was on my USB drive (probably picked up from a different computer) and AVG found and fixed it with no trouble. Same as Erik I use it on my win98 machine and put it on any computers I build or work on that do not already have an antivirus, or when customers have an "expired" version of Norton or McAffee and want something else that will work. Never have had any compaints...

Avast has gotten good reviews from the folks here on the forums, but I haven't tried it so I can't offer an opinon either way. I know one person who downloaded and ran it for a while, he had no complaints but if I remember correctly it caused problems, but only because he was trying to run that and AVG at the same time. (That will happen running any two antivirus programs at the same time, it's not limited to either Avast or AVG.) Problems stopped when I shut down Avast and let only AVG run at start up, then instructed him to only use it when he wanted to get a secondary scan to be sure then reboot and let only AVG run. No trouble running it that way.

[classicsoftware]

I'm an avast man becuase of it's low drag on the system. It's ease of customization. The one place where it has AVG is it has web mail scanner and AVG does not. For people with webmail or who check their office mail with a web-mail program (like my wife), the AVAST rocks........