Computers & Networking

[texruss]

NOD32 is excellent if you have the bucks. But for free Microsoft Security Essentials has been stellar in the short six-plus months it has been widely available. I have been working with, examining, and writing about malware for 20 years. MSE excels over some of the big names in AV because of the proprietary information Microsoft engineers possess about Windows coding. MS doesn't share the intricate innner coding so it seems logical that they know better than anyone how Windows gets infected.

MSE is not perfect...it will not stop the very latest webpage Trojan attack or or hostile downloaded application or email attachment. But it does protect better than anything I have seen barring NOD. I am putting MSE on all machines I repair and/or customize and unloading all the biggies in paid AV except for NOD and Kaspersky. And when the license runs out on those two paid AVs I put MSE in their place. I rarely see a re-infected machine now on the hundreds I have installed MSE. Combine it with a good protective HOSTS file replacement, and CCleaner.

HTH

[Ach3r0n]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/mcafeeofferstopayforpcrepairsafterbadupdate

[ClockworkKnight]

I'v had AVG and it ran fine only for a short time then just stopped working. I've heard nothing but problams with Avast with its resource hogging and Norton should just be throw in to a very deep hole

In terms of ree AV I'm starting to think about getting Microsoft Security Essentials but given the fact it is Microsoft, how good is it really ?

[mikeyk]

I just used Avast yesterday to fix my computer because of scamware that came through the other day. It worked fine.  I'm having trouble reconnecting my desktop files though, but I haven't lost anything. 

[texruss]

>I'm starting to think about getting Microsoft Security Essentials but given the fact it is Microsoft, how good is it really?

I have put it on at least 100 high risk users since October who had been getting trojans on a regular basis with our $50,000 regional license commercial AV product. No sense in embarassing them by releasing their name...let's just say they have micro success in stopping anything. Very good at detecting Trojans after ithe poor PC is infected, but this AV can't clean it either. *;-) 

Anyway...the users who are now Microsoft-protected have not been re-infected so I guess as my friend Chris in England sez...the proof is in the pudding!

As I said in the earlier post...who knows better how Windows gets infected then the Microsoft engineers who write the secret code that they don't share with the AV companies. If you know how it gets infected then you can make your product defend better. It's not perfect, but in a test I ran with a bad new Trojan I saw it defeat it while the commercial product failed.