Hi guys, not sure if this is the best place to post this but... i'm buying a new laptiop this week (HP DV9827EA), any thoughts on this would be great too by the way however, I've relied on zone alarm for the last couple of years with my sony vaio (yes stop laughing), but i've read a lot of reports that this can cause the infamous blue screen of death on vista, plus, with some google searches, BitDefender and Kaspersky are coming out on top. I know you guys are pretty sh1t hot so i'm hoping you will be able to guide me in the right direction. can i have too many anti virus/ spyware programs on my laptop? if so, if i had to hold a gun to your head (of course i wouldnt, but figuratively speaking)which programs would you swear by for me to install? any advice would be amazing! kind regards mike
its not good to have many anti-virus programs installed. its recommended that you have only one. i suggest avg, nod32, kaspersy. but thats not usual case with antispyware programs. i use only 1 antispyware program but you can have more than one. i use superantispyware. i was using avg antispyware until it went in commercial package. you can also try spybot, spyware terminator and ad-ware. those are free. if you can afford it, you can buy yourself a licenced security package like avg or kaspersky.
hi that's great thanks for your information! i always thought that freebie software would not be as good as the software you'd have to purchase, such as Kaspersky, but the comments on AVG seem to prove that wrong. would it be silly to purchase bitdefender or kaspersky when the likes of AVG is available for nothing? thanks again for your reply
Hi Bubba Okay... if you held a gun to my head, I would still say Antivir is the best antivirus, paid or free. You might never have heard of it (I most certainly did not while I thought AVG and bitdefender were the best). I've used most antivirus products, so I have some experience. Bitdefender and Kaspersky have okay detection, but they are known to be resource-hoggers. Bitdefender created gigabyte large temp files on my pc. AVG has absolutely horrible detection (okay... so I used to be a virus writer, so what?), and I will never use it again, and besides, AVG 8 is known to be a resource hogger as well. I think that Antivir, Nod32, and Kaspersky have the best detection out there, and Antivir is the only one that offers free protection. Look here: www.av-comparatives.org if you don't believe me. Best Regards
ill try that one too. i haven't had any problems since i installed avg except some updating issues. that server of theirs has a bandwidth limitation or something i dont know. do you know some superb antispyware app? i'm not really impressed with their performance since i dont use avgas
CDAV - thanks very much for that post. the reports on the comparative site on the face of it make for very intresting reading. I say on the face of it because I'm a laptop/pc/hardware/software thicko I've just purchased my new laptop and i've immediately downloaded Avira AntiVir PE classic. Like on the previous post, are there any spyware programs you would recommend?? thanks again for everyone's input onto this thread. it's really helpful and i'm very grateful
You're welcome. I'm a little more picky about antispyware programs. Of course, the setup I will recommend is completely free, but you must be very careful when downloading other free antispyware applications such as Spyware Terminator. Right now, I don't know any good and free antispyware programs that offer real-time protection, but i'll keep an eye out. DO NOT USE SPYWARE TERMINATOR!!!! Superantispyware Free- on-demand scanning (I bought the pro version for real-time protection, which is pretty good, and cheap) A-squared Free- extra sensitive on-demand scanning. Have to be careful with this tool. Spybot- deep scanning and immunization features SpywareBlaster- immunization features Best Regards
From my experience, AVG is not very good at detection. From a freeware standpoint, I've used AntiVir for many years, and even use it to cleanup machines where up-to-date commercial software (such as McAfee) failed to detect a threat. Nod32 is very good as well, but the turning on the "faster" scans they advertise can leave you defenseless in some cases, not finding threats a deeper scan would. I agree with the above post. Finding a "free" and "good" antispyware app is not possible. Windows Defender runs in the background of every Vista machine, but it's not very reliable. One of the best scanners is SuperAntiSpyware, but it will not block in real time. Same for Spybot, which offers some of the immunization features of Spyware Blaster. Spyware Blaster only blocks websites and is not a true antispy app. Ad-aware is ancient and a waste of space on your hard drive. If it comes down to it, I'd leave Windows Defender as the real-time agent (at least it's "some" protection) and then use SuperAntiSpyware and Spybot as stand alone scanners. Personally I use SpySweeper, which I believe is one of, if not the best commercial antispy app, offering real-time protection. I also bundle it with AntiVir, ZoneAlarm Free firewall and Mozilla Firefox. Using Firefox add-ons such as McAfee SiteAdvisor and AdBlock Plus, plus immunization added to your hosts files from Spyware Blaster or Spybot, and that will keep tons of crap from ever having a chance to get on your PC. Note: make sure you remove whatever commercial antivirus (typically Norton) from your PC before installing an antivirus program such as AntiVir. Same goes for any antispy app with real time scanning. Having 2 applications that serve the same purpose will only slow your machine down.
yeah i agree with SProdigy. i also use SUPERAntispyware. i think its enough for me. i don't use realtime protection anyways, maybe i should. i have that damn windows defender. it doesnt do anything except sitting on my hdd xD. i tried 6 antispyware programs and SUPERAntispyware is the only one which can find infections on my laptop. and that norton... its like a magnet for infections i tell you. i didnt find any system that had norton and wasnt a total wreck lol. try avoiding it any way possible
once again people, thank you all so much for taking the time to reply with such fantastic posts. all are extremely helpful. they only serve to proide me with a headache as to which piece of software to use. an this is a good headache i dont think there will ever be a definitive answer to these questions, but your replies make selection that tiny bit easier
"Diskless Angel" is another choice. It can take the OS to run in Ram as virtual image. Once infection of virus occurs, just reboot the computer and all viruses will be destroyed because it is only a virtual image.
