what AV do you prefer?


i used McAfee here for 2 years..
it never crashed..

anyone that uses Norton?

Can i use with a anti-spyware software?

Personally I prefer one of the free anti-viruses. They are usually less bloated and I trust them a lot more.

I would go McAfee over Norton. Norton is WAY too bloated. It's more like a brick than it is useful.

xboxrulz

Anti-viruses are becoming more and more resource intensive, Norton Antivirus being the most hungry one. Its not feasable to use it on systems like mine (Intel P4 3.0 HT, 1 GB RAM). The slowdowns were so annoying that I decided not to keep any of them (Anti-viruses). I do install any of the evaluation versions from various vendors, once in a while and do a full system scan; after which they go back to the bin.

McAfee is one of the most lightweight products out there. My personal favorite happens to be Panda Antivirus which uses various kinds of herustic scans to detect even the newest of viruses. Also, its much lighter than Norton.

It is possible that I am insane but, I do not keep any anti virus constantly running on my PC. In my experience they tend to use more overhead than I am willing to give up. Particularly on the low end machine I am currently using.

Thing is I have never had a virus problem in my many years of computing. This may well be because I am bright enough to avoid the most common ways of getting them in the first place. I think actively running programs of that sort are mostly useful to those who do not know better than to do things like click the pop up that claims you have a virus and need to click it's links to fix it, ironically causing tons of trouble. Using web mail helps as well given I never actually download my mail or any attachments.

None the less I need to install a new active anti-Virus on my fathers PC as he tends to NOT avoid doing things to get his PC infected. In his defense he is 66 years old.

If I have to choose between Norton and McAfee, then I'd definately go for McAffee, Norton still slows down your system too much and it's just too big.
If I can choose another one, I'd go for Avast, been using it for a long time and I'm happy about it .

I use both Norton and Mc Afee, and I frankly prefer Mc Afee.
Mc afee works fine with Ad-Aware 2007 free anti-spyware. Ad-aware 2008 refuses installation when McAfee is present.
And McAfee SiteAdvisor is nice, when it finds a not-tested-yet site, it asks you if you want it to test if for you, and then it tells you if you can trust the site or not.
And, yes, exactly like wutske, I hate the way Norton unattendly starts scanning your hard disk at boot, you have to wait until it finishes it makes me get angry.

Unlike other members of the forum, I highly recommend you constantly running an antivirus software to make sure that your system doesn't get infected. If you have a lightweight system, it shouldn't eat a lot of resources causing a substantial drag to your system.

xboxrulz

I agree with this. Even if you don't see it, a correctly running antivirus is protecting your computer, sometimes it destroys some attacks even without letting you know it. I have seen file simply disappearing during unzip operations, because the binaries were infected an automatically removed by the antivirus.
The best antivirus is sometimes not enough for preventing an infection, but it's absolutely necessary for the commont known risks.

I prefer norton over mcafee just because Im please with the use of norton 360. It provides everything that needs to protect my system from viruses and my browsing transaction needs. It also offers your a online backup storage account with I believe 20gb or 2gb of data that you can store in case your system bites the dust. Norton 360 also does not use alot of your computer resources when running in the background like its older software. This software actually does everything that you usually would do for your computer manually in one simple click. For example, it cleans or temporary history, and optimizes your hard drive space, update its virus definitions, and scans your computer of prone viruses that are lurking around in the internet today. It also is very simple to use even a baby can probably be able to run the maintenance control on your computer for you. They definitely simplified the user interface and added a lot of useful tools to help the user protect their system and sustain its privacy. You would definitely not be disappointed if you were to use norton 360.