Favorite Antivirus and Firewall programs

[BAC]

Background: I've tried many over time: Norton, McAfee, Windows in a few forms, and most recently BitDefender. Of these, the clear best was BitDefender. A few days ago when, upon time to renew my subscription, I got the 2010 version... and BitDefender Antivirus 2010 sucks worse than any analogy I can think of. It sucks on my Dell laptop running XP, and it sucks on my dad's business laptop running Vista. It may provide the best protection in the world, but all facets of my computer have slowed down to the point that half of my time on the computer in the last several days has been waiting. Not cool. It's officially gone.

As an interim solution I downloaded COMODO antivirus and firewall (will probably just use the firewall) and Avira AntiVir. I've heard enough good about them that they'd work as short term fixes, especially being free.

What do you folks like for antivirus and firewall protection?


-B

[ToddG]

\What do you folks like for antivirus and firewall protection?

The obvious.

[ZDL]

*******

[dmancornell]

All the software you mentioned (McAfee, Norton, BitDefender) are useless. Active scanning, or resident shield, or whatever each app calls it, they slow your computer to a crawl for no real gain at all.

Here's my setup: I run Firefox with NoScript to filter out untrusted scripts. On top of that I let Spybot S&D edit my hosts file to ignore known malware/spyware distributors. The downside is that it takes a while to set up NoScript to trust all the sites you regularly visit (banks, email, etc). On the other hand, my computers run squeaky clean and they are blazingly fast.

Install AVG free and run a weekly scan if you're paranoid. I do a scan whenever I feel like it, AVG always comes back clean.

Links for my suggested setup:

Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
NoScript: http://noscript.net/
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html - do *NOT* install the TeaTimer "system protection" tool

Somewhat off-topic, but make sure you are behind a router even if you only have a single computer. Software firewalls such as Windows firewall are a pain and suck up CPU cycles. Worst case scenario would be something like the Blaster worm sneaking its way into your open system.

[NinjaMedic]

Just get a damn Mac already, theres an App for that.

[silentsod]

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Lightweight and developed by a company Microsoft bought out that was known for producing a good AV.

Macs, or other Linux based OSes, aren't for everyone. Macs because of a lack of software unless you're running BootCamp or similar, free Linux OSes due to the lack of hardware support (which has improved a lot, admittedly) and many similar software shortages as Macs. Although there is a ton of freeware to do what you want, even if it'll be less polished than commercial products.

Switching platforms requires a good look at your usage. I have a large library of software for Windows I'm not willing to part with, and though I've run dual boots in the past I've more or less decided they're not for me. Certainly not when I spend 90+% of my time booting into only one OS and neglect the other.

It should also be noted that unused RAM storage and CPU cycles are essentially wasted. Modern OSes are usually good at allocating resources efficiently when you want to do something new right now. A lot of people complain about "Oh noes Vista/7 uses so much memory!" when what it's doing is loading your most accessed stuff into memory to make things faster.

[jgalt]

ESET NOD32

A big "+1"...

I've used their product on my XP laptop for 2-3 years now and have had zero issues. It is very affordable and easy to set up. Highly recommended...

[FDC]

The free Symantec Enpoint Protection FW/AV downloaded from AKO.

Works fine for what I need and it's free.

[ToddG]

Macs, or other Linux based OSes, aren't for everyone. Macs because of a lack of software unless you're running BootCamp or similar, free Linux OSes due to the lack of hardware support (which has improved a lot, admittedly) and many similar software shortages as Macs. Although there is a ton of freeware to do what you want, even if it'll be less polished than commercial products.

Anyone with even a little experience using an Intel Mac in a business environment can tell you this is not true. With something like Parallels, you can run almost any Windows application on your Mac simultaneously and seamlessly with your Mac apps; no need to reboot. The only time you'd use Boot Camp is for running Windows applications that make hardware-specific calls to your video card (mostly 3D games or CAD).

For most people, the whole Parallels/Boot Camp thing is a crutch that Apple uses to ease folks into the idea of having a Mac. Many Mac users find after a short while that they're not really relying on any Win-specific applications. I haven't even loaded Parallels on my new MBP.

[Littlelebowski]

Just use Virtualbox and skip the whole BootCamp/Parallels thing for free.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free antivirus and antispyware app for Winders. I recommend it.