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I'm looking for a all in one anti virus. Need it to block and scan for virus' malware spyware Trojans ALL of it. I have over five programs and each one is free and covers their own corner of these things. I'm tired of running one scan at a time and updating over five programs every other day and the memory they take up. I want one solid program that will hold it all down. I need to be able to install one copy on multiple computers, not have to buy a yearly licenses, do real time scans and not slow the computer down and get free updates....what do you got?

I've heard very good things about Microsoft Security Essentials. I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard it's pretty lightweight and unlike some of the incumbent AV companies, MS actually has it in their best interests to put a stop to malware in general.

After trying AVG, Avast, and Symantec, I've switched everything over to MSE. It's clean, easy, and friendly.
http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

I've run through AVG, Avira Antivir, Avast and MSE.
AVG is turning into a boated bunch of software that did the worst in the few known infected pieces files I tested them with.
Avira has those annoying pop ups in their free version, and it misses a lot of the same stuff AVG does.
I found Avast to be the best at finding viruses of the free ones out there. I loved the boot time scan. However, it does cough up a bunch of false positives.
MSE is the lightest of the bunch and almost as good as avast for detecting infections, but also has the odd false positive.
I should point out that the tests I did are with a random slew of infected files on a disk. Nothing scientific or impartial about it.

For most people because of light weight, ease of use and decent performance I suggest MSE as the free AV of choice. That's just me though.

i have avast and what ever program is real good i am willing to pay money for i have seen programs up to 250 dollars. i dont mind saving up for that but it better do what is is suppose to do. In case you missed what i want i need a all in one program. each program i have will find stuff the others wont i need ONE that will find it all.

Zone-alarm if you're going to buy something. It uses kaspersky's av, and is pretty tough all-around on security.
Sunbelt's Vipre and nod32 are also good scanners.
MSE for free, but the interface doesn't give you easy control of the software.
I don't mind using multiple programs, since modern AV seem to be bloated with multiple scanners anyway.
Windows defender is free, comes with vista/7, and avira does a good job scanning.
You can also disable the avira popup. google: remove avira popups.

Stay away from anything produced by Norton or Symantec. I like Microsoft Security Essentials as it is unobtrusive and doesn't seem to use many resources when running. Not sure what bases you already have covered with your 5 independent applications.

I was using Kaspersky last year, had computer freezing issues with this year's version, switched to NOD32 and happy with it so far.

i have c cleaner, avast anti virus, malware bytes, super anti spyware, and ad aware. plus windows defender

I am very happy with ESET NOD32 AV, and it seems to be well regarded for both its effectiveness and its relatively light footprint.

I used to use ZoneAlarm until a couple of years ago when I found that it was causing performance problems, mostly slow boot times, slow initialization for networking, and intermittent networking problems. Another friend of mine using ZoneAlarm at the time reported similar problems. After switching to NOD32 I was surprised by how responsive my system was, particularly right after reboot (not to beat the reboot thing to death, but it was really annoying to wait several minutes for full system responsiveness and networking).

I know that just using the NOD32 AV is not the same thing as using ZoneAlarm, which is AV + Firewall. I've never used ESET's Security Essentials, which is their AV plus their firewall app. But, I figure as long as I use a router w/ NAT, keep my system patched, my AV up to date, use the latest firefox, and use a non-administrative account for 99% of my e-mail, web surfing, office productivity, etc. activities then I'm OK not using a software firewall.

My choice is Microsoft Security Essentials as it is lightweight and unobtrusive. I have to say that I'm pretty careful with what I visit online, what emails I open and what programs I run so my highest priority was that the AV should be as lightweit and invisible as possible, that's why MSE caught my attention in the first place. Based on reviews and comparisons that I've read it does decent job blocking harmful junk, so it's become my choice of AV.

Swapped to MSE from my school-issued symantec corporate edition, and have no complaints. Only thing that might bother some people is you are automatically put into the Microsoft "spynet" thing, which basically sends MS information related to infections when you get one (which I assume is used to help MS improve detection) You can chose between "basic" and "advanced" (advanced sends more information) but you are forced to be in it in some way.

Also need to have geniune Windows.

Dirge wrote:

Stay away from anything produced by Norton or Symantec. I like Microsoft Security Essentials as it is unobtrusive and doesn't seem to use many resources when running. Not sure what bases you already have covered with your 5 independent applications.

This might have been good advice when Symantec went towards bloatware. But it has gotten very fast and light in its latest version. I have NIS on two systems and AVG on one. AVG is noticeably slower and more resource intensive. The free version of Avast is annoyware. And it really does get pretty annoying pretty quickly.

Because Symantec is actually good with mail-in rebates, I have not netted paying anything for Norton annual licenses by shopping for it in advance. You can almost always find NIS for free after rebates to upgraders. That does mean that you pay the first time you get the product, but I have yet to lay out anything for upgrades...and I upgraded to the latest generation after having gone to other alternatives when Norton became bloatware for a while. You will not find many defenders of NIS here because the program really did get pretty bad an bloated. It is now among the fastest and most accurate of the antivirus, etc. programs. And Norton Internet Security is an all-in-one scanner for viruses, malware, spyware, etc.

I'm very happy with Avira AntiVir Pro. It has been tested to have one of the best catch rates out there. And it's very lightweight and unobtrusive.

ya NIS is exactly what i am looking for but i always heard it is a memory hog and i dont need that i'm pretty sure having 5 programs is one of my memory problems anyways. So has norton gotten better in that area or you just a sales rep?

ok i'm looking at KASPERSKY lab Internet Security Home Edition 2010 and the av but what i want to know is what is the diff between the internet security edition and the av edition. does the IS come with the same AV ability's that the AV comes with on its own or would i need both? The av says it blocks a lot but the IS says it blocks Mal ware. does the AV not block mal ware?

MSE. Anything more is a waste unless you make it a regular habit to visit web sites you shouldn't visit.

Kaspersky - 3 PCs for 2 years = $100 Oz

Its a good package all round and doesn't slow your PC.

Read this site!

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

well i did a test last night took 8 hours but i did it. I scaned my computer with every program i had, then installed the Kaspersky trial version and it found 6 trojans that my programs didn't find.

mattbak73 wrote:

ya NIS is exactly what i am looking for but i always heard it is a memory hog and i dont need that i'm pretty sure having 5 programs is one of my memory problems anyways. So has norton gotten better in that area or you just a sales rep?

Norton seems fast and light to me. What really floored me was when I went back to it and NIS 2009 installed in something like -- quite literally -- 60 seconds.

I notice no slowdown of the system and it is usable during scans. The two systems that I am running it on are a Core 2 E6300 with 4GB of RAM and a Q6600 with 6 GB of RAM. Before switching back to it with NIS 2009, I was running AVG. I also had AVG on the E6300 when I had Windows 7 Beta on it since NIS had some early support issues with the beta. NIS is markedly faster and has noticeably less system load when scanning.

Neither system really has any memory use issues, though, so YMMV. Even with Win7 superfetch enabled, I seldom see memory usage climb over 50% when running multiple processes and folding.

NOD32 here. Done works good. The very best AV is, unequivocally, the power switch in the off position. However, I admit that it is very difficult to look at pr0n this way. Consequently I had a strange thought this very day, in the somewhat distant future I think Vista 64 will become the OS of choice for the security connoisseur.

Here's another vote for Avira. It is awesome. It beats AVG hands down in detection rate and speed. Ever since I switched over I have had to deal much less with viruses. In fact, I can count only one infection against Avira--where it missed a virus file, but keep in mind I'm talking in the context of tens of tireless home users who use XP administrator accounts and move files around all day. Performance is great, and my impression is that Avira's real-time scanner is faster than Microsoft's. On netbooks and slow systems I leave out the heuristic and anti-rootkit modules to help performance. Detection is what Avira does best, but if the system is already infected I use Malwarebytes for cleaning. Malwarebytes can also serve as a secondary on-demand scanner for external drives.

For a paid solution, I recommend NOD32, but I agree with [SDG]Mantis that Norton 2009 is good software.

In all honesty, you, yourself, is the best protection. In my 20 years, I have touch one software after another and I have come to the conclusion that free software is good enough for most people. That includes AV software. Just do what you know you have to do to protect your system. Don't open unquestionable links. Don't download crappy files. If you do, you know the risk and you pay the price.

Me, personally, am using MSE - my opinion is that it is made by the same company that makes windows, so they should know what they are doing. So far, it has been great. There are times when human element is needed to make it perfect.

[SDG]Mantis wrote:

mattbak73 wrote:

ya NIS is exactly what i am looking for but i always heard it is a memory hog and i dont need that i'm pretty sure having 5 programs is one of my memory problems anyways. So has norton gotten better in that area or you just a sales rep?

Norton seems fast and light to me. What really floored me was when I went back to it and NIS 2009 installed in something like -- quite literally -- 60 seconds.

I notice no slowdown of the system and it is usable during scans. The two systems that I am running it on are a Core 2 E6300 with 4GB of RAM and a Q6600 with 6 GB of RAM. Before switching back to it with NIS 2009, I was running AVG. I also had AVG on the E6300 when I had Windows 7 Beta on it since NIS had some early support issues with the beta. NIS is markedly faster and has noticeably less system load when scanning.

Neither system really has any memory use issues, though, so YMMV. Even with Win7 superfetch enabled, I seldom see memory usage climb over 50% when running multiple processes and folding.

I was using NAV 32 on my old box and I echo the comments above. I had sworn off Norton's, but a friend persuaded me to give it another shot last year and in was very unobtrusive. I think we got NIS to go with MSE for the new box which is running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. We'll see how that works out.

I've always been happy with Avast. I used MSE for a little while. The interface was very nice and clean. I liked that. The problem is that we use Forefront (corporate version of MSE) on the campus where I work as Help Desk staff. It's a technical university which means our users a bit (only a bit) more computer savvy than the average office worker. Forefront misses stuff all the time. I've run across times where Forefront says that the computer is fine and a scan doesn't reveal anything, meanwhile the computer suddenly reboots, automatically logs into a new account with the task manager and other useful features disabled. If Forefront can't keep stuff clean, then I'm not very inclined to use the consumer version.

AVAST is really good, I used it too and it also seems to be on top ten best antivirus software along with Kaspersky, ESET NOD32, AVG and others.

My vote: MSE

PC World's vote: MSE, as well.

That was good enough for me to try it, and I think I'll stick with it.

I bought and installed NIS 2010 on Intel D510MO (Atom processor 1.66 GHz) with Win7 and yeah, I am happy with my purchase.
NIS 2010 consumes a little bit more memory than Panda Cloud Antivirus but on the CPU usage, I feel no different.

PainIs4ThaWeak1 wrote:

My vote: MSE

PC World's vote: MSE, as well.

That was good enough for me to try it, and I think I'll stick with it.

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