I have a newly purchased computer on the way. For protection this time around I am not going with Norton Systemworks, or any of the other suites, choosing instead to buy a separate firewall, virus scanner, spyware deleter, and registry editor/cleaner. I already have the best in every category, Zonealarm for my firewall, Spyware Doctor for spyware, and "Registry Repair" for registry errors. What I cannot decide, is what antivirus to buy! Whereas all the reviews on these other products were pretty straightforward, and therefore enlightening, reviews for antivirus progs seem to be rather wishy washy, and indecisive. Any suggestions? (along with urls that I can check out personally, if possible)... Thanks.

amaze122,

I've been (very very) happy with Avast.

J_

Edit: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html. Oh yeah, it's free.

Been using AVG scanner... works well for me and does not suck system performance like the commercial ones. Plus it's free....

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

I would suggest NOD 32. Very good Antivirus Program

The November edition of "Computer Shopper" magazine (see Pg 86) has an article naming the top 100 picks for technology items. Here's what they recommend:
Best Internet Security Software: PC-cillin Internet Security 2005. $49.95 www.trendmicro.com (This is a full suite of protection, AV, FW, etc.)
Best Antispy software: Ad-Aware Se Personal edition 1.06. Free. www.lavasoft.com
Best Antispam Software: MailFrontier Desktop. $29.95 www.mailfrontier.com
Best Antivirus software: ZoneAlarm AntiVirus 6.0 $29.95 www.zonelabs.com (includes a firewall)

I don't trust mags like Computer Shopper that are wholly paid for by advertising.
They'll recommend whichever product gives them the most money to advertise it...

Having tried a variety of products over the years (Norton, McAffee, AVG, PC-Cilin, Panda, and several others) I've settled down on Kaspersky.
Excellent product, and excellent support (OK, I get in-house support as we use it at work and have a direct line to the manufacturer as a reseller).
Not the cheapest, and no nice flashy user interface but who needs that anyway?

If you don't go using P2P crap and refrain from other illegal activities you should have little problems anyway. In those cases your Windows XP built in firewall with a good virus scanner (to detect the incoming email virusses from your friendly spammers) should suffice.

Most people also don't get enough spam to warrant expensive anti-spam software, especially since many ISPs nowadays have spamfilters installed on their servers which catch anything consumer grade spamcatchers would catch.
For high capacity users you're likely running your own mailserver with built-in features, or else you can simply use Spambayes (look for it at sourceforge).

Not because I care to argue with you, but because there's no reason to provide incorrect, (or perhaps) less than accurate, information. Not to mention the implications to users who accept your comments as reasonable.

A. Lack of participation in these activities will not prevent the problems that the programs in question are designed to protect against. Porn sites are not illegal, but they have plenty of malicious code. Email? Instant Messaging? All very legal, yet breeding grounds for malicious activity. What are "illegal activities"? Not sure, but P2P and "illegal activities" are not the source of our problems. It's the perfectly legal activities, that the majority of the users participate in, which are the most profitable targets. B. Using P2P programs that are not bundled with adware/spyware are safe in the pure respect of "safe use", which leads to C. Proper use of the program (practicing "safe use"). "" as defined as ensuring what you're downloading is the true intended download by checking file properties, user ratings, as well as just being overall knowledgeable about the intended file will keep you almost as safe as not using them at all.

Since when does XP built in firewall "suffice". Not sure if you're aware, but the XP firewall only provides protection against incoming connections. I am NOT disputing this firewall's incoming protection, and by no means is this a BAD firewall, but how exactly are you going to protect against the outgoing communication from malware, spyware, key loggers, ect..? Here I'll help, with a better firewall and a variety of adware/spyware/malware removers and products to prevent infections.

So let me get this straight, all you have installed is an antivirus program and XP firewall?

What's your IP address, again?

J_

heheh. That's pretty funny, J Search.

I've used AVG antivirus for quite a while now .... it was good until it let come a virus that ruined all the apps of my hard drive. Then I tried ZoneAlarm security suite ... it was also good not taking much resources... but I had some minor problems with the program. Now I'm testing Panda's Titanium and PCTools AV.

I would recommend you to try ZoneAlarm security suite if you want all in one solution.

Panda: died on me the other day, so I ditched it. They keep reactivating the built in firewall and stuff like that, so it doesn't run smoothly alongside Zonealarm - at least, not for me. It appears to have kept the pc fairly clean while it was installed, but it slowed the pc down by a vast amount - uninstalling it halved the boot time from 2-3 minutes back down to 1.

AVG: Runs happily with ZoneAlarm, and appears to be doing ok, but it has a few annoying habits:
- the installer for the virgin digital player is detected as a trojan and deleted. I don't think it can be infected since it came from the virgin site, and panda never picked it up, but... I don't know.
- Installed it the other day on a system infected with a worm that affects HTML pages & it deleted them all, instead of cleaning the infected lines of code.

So, no reccomendations, but some information as to my experiences with them... Might be of use to you, might not.