Which is REALLY the best antivirus/ad/spyware?

[peterb]

The best defence is user education, really

Keep your PC patched and up to date, and use firefox for browsing.

I hate resident checkers as they usually convert your nice 2Ghz dual core PC into an old 500Mhz celeron.

They are necessary for dumb users though, I have no idea how many people manage to get so badly infested,
do they wildly click every attachment going, and do they click alll silly web adverts as well ?

This makes a good point - there is a great risk that having installed asn AV product, the user can sit back and relax, thinking his system is safe - camplacency sets in.

An informed user is the best defence, and the better informed the user, the better the protection for the situation. Computer security is a process, not a product! (To loosely quote Bruce Schneier)

In any situation, the sysadmin should conducyt a 5risk assessment to see what the likely attack scenario is, and what steps need to be taken to mitigate them. In a corportae environment this will include acceptable use policies, together with some technical measures.

In a home environment, where the roles of system admin and the end user are the same persojn, the risk assessment will be less formal (probably coming down to "I'd better install some AV" - which one is best?) but really it should be a bit more than this.

Mitigation measures should include considering the operating system vulnerbailities, considering firewall protection for direct attacks by otheer malware, not routinely running with admin privileges, being circumspect about opening unknown e mails, and being wary about following links in e mails, and avoiding warez sites and the like. AV should then be considered as backstop, to kick in when the previous measures have failed.

[Sumanji]

NOD32. No contest.

[bk7]

I have been reliably informed that Avira is one of the best, and after trialing it myself im inclined to agree.
http://www.free-av.com/

[Haggisuk99]

I have been reliably informed that Avira is one of the best, and after trialing it myself im inclined to agree.
http://www.free-av.com/

I repair computers for a living and one of the main things i have to do day in and out is to remove viruses and trojans spyware etc etc
I can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that the one consisitant av that does this when all others fail including kaspersky which is excellent btw is Avira
the personal free edition i have used and install on all my customers machines and it always performs well and is light on resources, if you are look at the av-comparitive site link given earlier and look at the heuristic test it comes out over 90 per cent when others just dont come near it, someone mentioned Nod earlier and I have removed nod on a few occasions and used avira to clean up anything up to 100 viruses from machines.
Biggest problem you have with an av that uses a signature based technique (symantec nod etc etc) is that if the person changes the scripting slightly it can bypass the majority of signature based avs out there. Also any viruses that use encryption to hide themselves will get past them immediately.
Thus a antivirus must be good on its heuristics in order to discover these viruses that circumvent the the traditional signature based detection and Avira is rated one of the top.
Plus it is free for personal use but just a quick note from default it is set not to scan all files or archives, so a quick trip into the settings to set it to scan all files on a manual scan and archives and to set teh heuristics to high will benefit you, especially as it scores very little false positives
Also just for spyware you can download the google pack and get a free version of spyware doctor one of the best for detecting spyware, unfortunately it can fail on removing some of the more stubborn ones but it is fantastic for finding some that can remain hidden from most others.
Hope this helps you decide

[Sema4]

As any reliable antivirus review will confirm (google is your friend), Avira is without a doubt the best AntiVirus / AntiSpyware currently available, and as I already mentioned in my earlier post in this thread, you can get the full 'premium' version free for 6 months by following the Avira Promotion page link in my earlier post, forget the free version with it's reminders to buy every time it updates, give your customers the premium version for free for 6 months !!!!!!!

[dangel]

antivir appears to trial for just 30 days, not 6 months
"Thank you for selecting an Avira promotional license. Avira delivers globally recognised award-winning security and we are sure that you will be satisfied with this promotional license and the security it delivers!

Your personal license key is attached and contains the following license:

Product name: Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium - 1 Year
License valid until: 2008-07-19"

[Sema4]

Thats odd, I just put one through that page and the licence I got was valid until december....

Have you signed up for antivir before or something perhaps ??

[dangel]

Nope

[Sema4]

Hmmm, I wonder if it's geographic or something then, perhaps it goes off IP addresses , I don't know what else to suggest... sorry, thought I was doing you all a favour...

[Sema4]

How about this one ?? It's the same promotional offer but sponsored by a different company, you may get a longer duration with it....

Avira Free Licence Promotion

[Haggisuk99]

antivir appears to trial for just 30 days, not 6 months
"Your personal license key is attached and contains the following license:

Product name: Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium - 1 Year
License valid until: 2008-07-19"

You can just request a new key from them usually when this expires.
the free version licence only lasts for 6 months as well and when it exprires there is a link on the site that allows you to download a new license key. Ive just tried it and it gave me 92 days so I am not sure if that is because I am a exisiting customer etc or whether it is by geographical as suggested earlier. Maybe the poster that got the full six months could register for the OP

[Paul Iddon]

I'm still on Onecare, the trial has 50+ days left.

Will keep an eye on this thread as time goes by and if I need to make an alternative choice, and do so, I'll let you know!

Thanks for the info. It's an inteersting thread this one...



Regards.


Paul.

[Jackalb]

I have been using NOD 32 it is very good . I think each softare has good points and bad its just a matter of finding one thats right for your system. I used AVG for ages and didnt have many problems but maybe it just didnt pick many up.