Jeremy

I'm not using pathetically slow obsolete floppies as a boot method. I don't have a floppy drive nor do I have the drivers for it (thanks to nLite). If I want portable storage, I use my OCZ Dual Channel 512 MB USB stick. Thanks anyway for the suggestion.

if I am not mistaken, an Internet Hijacker is spyware and technically not a virus, therefor it makes sense why SAV10 didn't do anything about it. Microsoft AntiSpyware was the one that wiped it out, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm actually not going to bother doing my own comparison because of that website I found. I don't feel like reinventing the wheel anytime soon. I'm just confident that if you use: - Kaspersky - NOD32 - AVG - McAfee - Symantec that you're doing pretty good. Also, common sense is the best defense of all.

I didn't say Kaspersky was the best, but it sure is one of the best. Also, I will create my own thread, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... but someday... lol Edit - Hmm, I guess I don't have to... http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2006_02.php Top 3: - Norton :'( - Kaspersky - NOD32

Gouki, okay, you never talked about AV. Well, gunsmokingman, you use AVG then Gouki said Amen to your statement regarding performance over GUI. I fully agree, but I just want to know for a fact which anti-virus does have the best performance (definitions and features), so we aren't putting faith blindly into an anti-virus because it auto-updates and we just never happen to get a virus. An AV shouldn't be praised solely based on whether or not you never become infected while you're using that particular AV, but its ability to disinfect/delete/quarantine infections. I did make assumptions previously and I apologize. They are doing the right thing as far as the purpose of this thread technically stands, but they aren't doing a wise thing by recommending Norton due to how poorly it performs. As for ending the discussion / game over, I'm not losing my temper or anything. I already apologized for making assumptions earlier in the thread, but I feel strongly motivated towards comparing anti-virus programs, just as I did for the registry cleaners. I admit I do care which anti-virus people use. I'm not going to flame you for using Norton, but I will strongly oppose that decision for obvious reasons. My mother had Avast on her laptop, I switched her to Kaspersky and it found Adware and Trojans, whereas Avast didn't. Keep in mind that different AV's have different definitions, but I think Kaspersky has more than Avast. Hell, AVG has more than Avast.

My in-laws gave me the money and I picked them up a D-Link DI-604 from our tech shop. Very wise decision.

@Blinkdt, everyone here is calm as far as I know. I know exactly what you're talking about. We're on the same page there. I didn't say AVG was crap, perhaps some may have interpreted my posts as saying such, but maybe my emphasis on different feature-sets came out the wrong way. As I've said several times, we had AVG installed for over a year at the tech shop, then tried Kaspersky, 6 viruses found. But, Symantec is really that bad for you? I need to do some comparisons soon. Thanks for your input. All I know is that when people bring in their HP computers with 10 pop-ups at boot, 45 processes, 45 start-up entries (35 of which are spyware/viruses), 220 spyware and 55 trojans... I run the following programs with updated definitions: Ad-Aware SE Pro 1.06 SpyBot 1.4 Microsoft AntiSpyware CWShredder (Trend Micro) HijackThis Kaspersky After this, the system is totally cleaned, even of CoolWWWSearch.

Gentle Giant, I wonder what your post said before you edited it and put in the whistle smiley... do I smell smoke?

I'm glad to hear you have your own personal anti-malicious system on Linux running, but I'm concerned about the hundreds of millions of n00bs out there who barely know how to turn on a computer, let alone use an anti-virus program, I want to be able to compare all products and tell others what programs really are best overall. As for GUI, features and memory usage, these seem to be more important to most users than how fast a definition file is released for a 0-day critical Windows exploit, for example. However, you have a very good point. Thankfully, McAfee has always done a great job of coming to the rescue when Microsoft likes to take a week before addressing a serious issue. McAfee sends out a fix and informs other companies, Kaspersky for example. Also, programs like Kaspersky, NOD32, and others update daily, so I think it's all good.

Gouki said: There are a lot of programs that have a very nice GUI and do work very effectively. JV16 PowerTools, CCleaner, nLite, Opera, etc, and none of these are open-source. Saying "software" today" isn't very accurate, more of a slightly inappropriate generalization, also taking into account that you stated you haven't used anti-virus in 7 years.gunsmokingman said: No, I do feel my statement is justified because you guys defend a product like AVG while praising performance over GUI, when AVG's performance and feature-set compared to that of Kaspersky is not something to write home about. As I said, that's where I come in to show which anti-virus can be properly praised about. You can be used to it all you like, but even if the GUI sucks, if the feature-set and performance are superior to many others of it's kind, it's getting a medal. Gouki said: I'd rather people have a proper and unbiased analysis on the truly superior anti-virus programs out there instead of having more people post, exciting the enthusiasts, just to see some n00b say "Norton rules!". That's a waste of time to say that, a waste of space on the forum, and when in reality Norton is the most problematic and memory hogging anti-virus in existence.

AMEN brother! Performance over eye candy! What saddens me is that you guys would never think twice about what you're actually saying. Sure it's commendable to say you prefer the performance over eye candy, why else would someone like me use nLite? I've been preaching about that for the past 2 and a half years and will until the day no one uses XP anymore. But, what I mean is, you'll never take the time and effort to compare different anti-virus programs to see which one actually has the better feature-set and how well it performs those features. You'll just get used to which ever program your friend brings to your house one day, notice that you don't have to bother with the GUI very often and say it's the best one in your own opinion. See, that's where I come in, to go beyond my own comfort zone and see which one(s) are the best for people to use. I'm not biased in the comparison, either. Anyone with any knowledge on anti-virus software at all knows that Norton is not recommended due to being the hugest memory hog out there. Anyway, I took a few moments this morning to compare Kaspersky and AVG in VMware. Kaspersky has 2 processes, the Service and the GUI. AVG has 4 processes. Kaspersky took up about 30 MBs of RAm while AVG's 4 Services combined were around 15 MBs. Don't feel so righteous just yet there Gouki... the scanning options and advanbced features of Kaspersky outnumber and outperform those of AVG's by far! And I won't just leave that to the mere statement that it is. I\m going to do a full analysis of each Anti-Virus in this poll, then I won't be blindly saying "<Insert AV program name here> Rules!" There is the reason for it, and the info to back up the reason.

So you're saying you think Kaspersky is crappy and AVG is awesome? Yeah, the results at the tech shop sure do justify that assumption. To reference the options in #10: iChecker and iSwift PDF

AVG's GUI could be better, and if an anti-virus didn't automatically update, I doubt many would use it.

I feel like taking a day at the shop next week to just compare Anti-virus programs.

Uhm, ok... Why aren't you running the latest 3DMark?

I tend to think that faster scanners aren't scanning as thoroughly as ones like Kaspersky which scan all filetypes. In the future I hope it only scans files that can be infected. HTML, GIF, etc cannot be infected (as of yet, anyway) so no use scanning those. But, then again, a file could be masked as a .txt file and be an .exe so I guess there's a point to it. We scan all our customers' PCs with Kasp 6 but install AVG Free, even though Kasp found 6 viruses that AVG missed. Having to clean viruses off half a dozen PCs really gets you confident about an anti-virus program quickly. Also, Kaspersky has a great GUI!

Let me make this perfectly clear, the *only* thing I'm doing is slipstreaming SP2 over top of my XP Pro Gold then making an ISO, *nothing* else. The following files fail to copy *every* time. - estre.ttf (Font) - home_ss.dll (Luna Homestead Theme Style) Please fix in the next version.

It's 5 years old and as Zxian reinforces my point of it not being efficient enough, even some tech sites recommend that you use a "third-party" defragger. It simply doesn't do the job. PD7.

But to add my own stuff, I need to make CAB files? Does BartPE support USB 1.1/2.0 so that I can run anti-spyware programs from my USB stick and update them, without having to make a new ISO everytime updates are out? That's just an unreasonable amount of hassle.

Can anyone tell me of a bootable CD/program I could use to boot into a Windows-like GUI and have access to added software? I tried ERD Commander 2003 from Winternals but I can't seem to add my own stuff. Many thanks, Jeremy

I tend to not pay much attention to the browser's ability to render stuff since the differences seem to be unnoticable. Opera has a better feel to me than Firefox, but some will say the opposite. The seconds aren't important to me. Security and functionality are important to me.

http://www.collegehumor.com/movies/1682020/ Hoolllyyy god ****....

Yeah, we install AVG Free for all our customers at our tech shop (www.mysterybyte.com) but we use Kaspersky 6 on our shop PCs since we had AVG running for over a year and Kasp found 6 viruses that were sitting there the whole time. I guess AVG is missing a few defs. As for which thread to look at, I'd say this one we're involved in now seems to be quite informative.

You guys are really starting to freak me out.

Yeah, the ability to customize your own Main Bar for Opera pwnz. And the middle clicking really pwnz.

I tried Winpooch and thought it was a really silly program. I use Outpost Firewall which took some getting used to after having previously been a Sygate user, too. However, it gives more info in what I consider a more organized GUI than Sygate. At any time, I can see which application is using bandwidth and which ports (local and remote). Zxian was also a Sygate fan (he was the one who got me to use it in the first place) but once I told him about Outpost, he also switched.