I am inclined to use a free antispyware program as opposed to pay for protection. The reason is that if I can get infected anyway, I prefer not to pay for it. I currently have AVG but lost faith in it. What do you recommend (if a pay solution is worth the money it will not be a problem)? Please do not suggest Norton or McAffee as I considered these two not worth discussing.

dlr_graph wrote:

I am inclined to use a free antispyware program as opposed to pay for protection. The reason is that if I can get infected anyway, I prefer not to pay for it. I currently have AVG but lost faith in it. What do you recommend (if a pay solution is worth the money it will not be a problem)? Please do not suggest Norton or McAffee as I considered these two not worth discussing.

OK, I still use AVG as my AV, updates every two days and after 5 years and I haven't had one issue yet. You might like Avast, I user it with Vista. For spyware I use SpywareBlaster and SpywareBot and SpyareGuard. All free too!

Oh, everyone who has NOD32 here swears by it too. I'll let tnem expound on it.

I run AVG on all the machines I build for others and on all my personal machines. I have never had an infection that AVG wouldn't fix. What happened to make you loose faith in it?

AVG is probably one of the best "free" AV programs out there but when it comes to protection, NOD32 is the only way to go. AVG does a good job scanning and finding them but when it comes to real time protection it can not even touch NOD32. Nothing can touch NOD32 especially the two famous bloatware McAfee and Norton.
Download the thirty day trial of NOD32 from ESET. You will see the difference, your computer will run better and faster than on any other AV program and will be protected and it scan faster also.

As for antispyware, I run Spysweeper and CounterSpy. Spysweeper is really starting to pee me off though by including the ask.com toolbar in there last few updates.

As you might can see I don't do the free programs. I spent 14 months straight testing AV programs one year and NOD came out on top and I have never looked back.

Yea, we ban people for suggesting Norton/McAffee around here Not really, but yea we all live for NOD32 (at least the 2.7 version). The 3.0 versions of NOD32 and ESS have been buggy from my experience (30 day trial is good if you're considering them). I like Avast for free AV though. I find AVG to be a little more annoying and less effective, but considering both are free you can use both and make your own judgment.

As for anti-spyware software, I count on NOD32 to keep most of that off my PC and just run Spybot periodically. SpySweeper is alright for live protection, but for the few times that I actually get anything on my computer I don't need something running 24/7 just for spyware.

You are correct in saying that Version 3 of NOD is buggy PERTAINING to the business edition. I setup the new server for the law firm and tried version 3 but went back to version 2.7 quickly. So far the stand alone version 3 has given me no issues.

I use McAfee as its the standard at my college, however most people use the "suite" this is a POS, andi will never use it agian. for virii, i use McAfee 8.5i Enterprise Edition, and for spy/mal ware i use Lavasofts' Ad-Aware SE.

i have used NOD32 and was happy with it too.

my college uses McAfee so everyone here that uses their internet has to use it too. i have used it for ... errr 12+ years, and have been happy, no issues. ( except when i bought the Suite, thats a POS and should be banned from the market.! )

During the summer I have to travel to a college about 5 hours away for training. It makes me so mad that I have to uninstall my NOD and install AVG or Norton due to the fact that is all they allow. They use the Cisco software to make sure you have one of the two installed. Grrrrrrrrr,, make me so mad they do not recognize NOD32

NT50 wrote:

You are correct in saying that Version 3 of NOD is buggy PERTAINING to the business edition.

Well, I've never used the business edition The 2 fatal flaws I've experienced are:

1. NOD32 3.0 on my personal computer running XP-64 became inoperable for some unknown reason. It always showed up as a red icon, and reinstalling it didn't fix it. Back to 2.7.

2. ESS 3.0 on a customer's computer caused them to be unable to access pages randomly, specifically ebay.com but at random times other pages as well. Had to put them back on 1.7 even though they paid for the whole suite.

So, at this point I really only trust 2.7

The suite?
That was the firewall part of it.