Re: Which Antivirus and Firewall

asdf wrote:
used to use Mcafee and Sygate.
Sygate is no longer developed
Mcafee is slowing down my system to the point of
it being unusable. Right now using Symantec but am
concerned that it's not protecting my system as much
as Macafee did. What's everyone recommendation
as to AV which is easy on the resources and yet
has high rate of detections. What about a good firewall.
Right now I am using ZA 6.0

thank you




You'll get nearly as many differing opinions as you will responses.

I don't think any security "suite" is a good choice. Use smaller, less-resource-draining stand-alone products.

I used, and recommended, Norton Antivirus and then Norton Internet Security, for many years, on Win98, WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP, all without any significant problems. I had used McAfee prior to that. But it's been several years since I've been tempted to try McAfee products. Their quality seemed to take a steep nose-dive after they were acquired by Network Associates.

However, when my subscription to Symantec's updates for Norton Internet Security 2002 came up for renewal (at a cost substantially higher than the preceding year's subscription), I decided to try less expensive solutions. I downloaded and installed the free version of GriSoft's AVG (http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php ) and the free version of Sygate's Personal Firewall (http://smb.sygate.com/free/default.php ). Both have proven to be easily installed, easy to use, and quite effective. Additionally, I was pleasantly surprised to see a small but very noticeable improvement in my PC's performance, once I'd replaced the Symantec product.

Of course, since then, Symantec has purchased Sygate and ended the distribution of the free firewall. Fortunately, there's still ZoneAlarm, Tiny, Kerio, et al.

A recent comparison:

Retrospective / ProActive Test May 2006
http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2006_05.php



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