Best antivirus program?

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If you're going to pay I'd say NOD32 for sure. Of the free ones, AVG or AVAST will do fine.

Avast for me.

I've had avg and nod32 as well, but i found them confusing / counter intuitive to use. (And nod32 missed a trojan that messed up my system, so no trust from me on that one).

While we're on the subject of security, is it necessary to get a third-party firewall or is it safe to stick with the one that comes default in Windows? For now I'm running XP in virtualbox and keeping most of my internet use in Ubuntu.

The default Windows XP firewall isn't very good at all; it does not prevent random applications from phoning home, it mostly only prevents unsollicited incoming traffic on predefined ports, not ports that you might not even know have been opened up by one application or an other.

I use Sunbelt Personal Firewall on windows. On linux i've scripted my own firewall-rules.

The default Windows XP firewall is perfectly adequate for most people; it does not arbitrarily prevent random applications from phoning home, when that's exactly what you expect them to do. It does prevent unsolicited incoming traffic on predefined ports, not ports that you have little interest in being pestered about, which have been opened up by one application or an other which you have installed for precisely that purpose.

If you install dubious applications on your machine, it's far too late to quibble over whether they might then access the internet.

As you are running XP as a virtual machine, Orwell, I'd suggest you take a snapshot of the virtual disc you are using for XP (tar cjf xpdisc.tar.bz2 xpdisk.xpi). That way, should XP commit hara-kiri, you just replace the disc with the backup (tar xjf xpdisc.tar.bz2). It'll need updates, but it's a lot quicker than re-installing it, plus all the applications, and tweaking it all to your liking.

Vipre is cheap, light and catches everything...

No AV ever "catches everything".

When a new (not a trivially changed) virus comes out, every system is susceptible to it, until someone notices it, reports it, someone else then analyses it, finds out how it works, works out how to recognise it, and adds it to their AV database.

So... people who complain that "XYZ anti-virus is no good because it let a virus onto my system" are being unrealistic.

avg works fine for me (although since it's been "discovered", they've been trying to cash in on it...)

I know it's unrealistic, AV are in a catch-up industry not preventive. But if X lets it through and Y catches it; I'll go with Y purely because it caught a problem i had at that time (and they're more on the ball when it comes to updates for new threats) and I'll doubt X. If it happens twice, there's no doubt for me.

Mileage per AV varies per person; but that's my view.

As for applications phoning home; i'll be the one to check for an update. I know things like phoning home are meant to enhance user-friendliness, but that doesn't mean i want them to do that out of the box. Application designers should have the courtesy to build in a prompt that asks me if i'd like it to check for updates.


Also true, but that wasn't the question. The question was "is it safe to stick with the one that comes default in Windows?".
And imho it's not. But I can agree that it's adequate for most people.

I have been using AVG for a long time, never any complaints until 3 weeks ago AVG wrongly detected a Trojan Horse on my machine. It was a false positive and removed a very important .dll file which was no Trojan Horse at all. As a consequence my PC went in loops and could not properly restart again. Only a week later a guy I know who is more IT minded could resolve the issue, but by then I had to rely a week on internet cafes. So my confidence in AVG is a bit blurred right now, although I have not gone as far as replacing it. Thing is: your machine can only handle with 1 antivirus and removing a program often is not that safe as they leave little bits and pieces on your hard drive which prevent the new antivirus from working properly (even some paid antivirus machines use this trick to make sure customers stick with them - I did customer support for such a company and they made sure uninstalling it was a real hassle) and I figure this is not worth the risk when AVG will probably want to save their reputation and make sure such a flaw never happens again.

Antivir.de is very good I heard, when it comes to free antivirus.

If your security is worth a lot to you and you wish to pay, NOD32 is by far the best according to several IT professionals I know. I am not sure if it is expensive or not, I figure myself that if I avoid risky sites such as porn, gambling, illegal filesharing etc that my PC should be safe enough with AVG ... Sometimes the best protection is to just not take big risks on the web, even the best antivirus will not stop every single virus. So avoid porn, gambling, illegal MP3 sites, etc and use a proper antivirus machine on top of that, and of course Spybot SD is your friend to stop spyware

As for firewall... Most people who use the windows XP one rarely have problems unless they visit lot of risky sites of course. I am not sure if you can have two firewalls on your computer without them both disturbing each others functioning. If it is not possible to have two firewalls working at once, then I would not risk to go through uninstalling the windows firewall when most of the time it works fine enough. If 2 firewalls is perfectly fine then a second lock on the door is never a bad choice ...

AVG & Zonealarm are a mighty good mix. Add Ad-Aware and Spybot and your guarded like Fort Knox. [Well almost, If you would pay for AV or your ISP provides your AV I'll go with Symantec.]

I find Norton OK At the moment I am using Norton Internet Security of which I paid for the first time a whopping £30 from PC world. Next time I am going to download Norton 360 from the Internet rather than having to pay £30 or more for every antivirus subscription. One can get to it by going onto google amd writing iin the antivirus program of ones choice. I was kicking myself when I logged on to google and keyed in free Norton 360 and there it was

But dont all those programs run in each others way? I mean, usually having more than 1 antivirus program is a recipe for disaster. Multiple anti spyware programs is perfectly OK, not sure if more than 1 firewall would work.

I don't have more than one antivirus program. Only more than one antispyware.

McAffee seems best to me, but that's only because my ISP provided it for free, and it didn't slow down my computer.

Hi guys,

I have just downloaded a free program I never heard of called Comodo.

Apparently PC World loves it.

As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, all the other free programs are nagware.

I'll let you know how it goes.