Windows 8 & Anti-Virus

[Piet Le Roux]

I have practical experience with Microsoft Security Essentials, AVG and Norton. My son came back from a LAN party with some malware on my USB stick that he borrowed. At the time I was running AVG at home and at work we have a very expensive Norton package. AVG did not even see it coming, Norton identified it but could not remove it because it took over the system restore and restored itself every time you reboot. At work our IT boffins could not remove it manually (a very embarrassing experience) so they just saved my documents and re-installed everything. My nephew does a lot of IT and recommended that I use Essentials and I installed it after I re-installed windows at home. Before I restored my computer I inserted the very same USB stick into my computer and immediately a red warning window came up followed by a green “your computer have been cleaned” window : It was that easy with Essentials! I have never understood why people don’t have any faith in Microsoft, maybe it’s because we believe that if something is for free it must be no good. Actually it’s not for free because it is only for installation with genuine paid-for windows OS and comes included with Windows 8. That maybe thats part of the problem: people without a genuine OS prefer to buy their anti-malware software. My son have so much faith in it that he uses it with “utilities” that contains mal-ware and just remove the mal-ware later with essentials after the job has been done.

 

[Mr.CookieMonster]

I use Avast. It's great.

 

[Conack]

I use Avast. It's great.

Ditto.
I'll check MSE out again though after all the above noted good experiences. (I'm also running Windows 8 Pro)

I come across a lot of PCs with all sorts of AV's installed and my findings as such:

Kaspersky has become a heavy resource hog (Norton and McAfee has always been in that bracket)
Avira has been rated really good (and free) but the ad-popups are rather annoying. (You can disable them with a little workaround)
IIRC, last year Avast and Avira was tied for the lead among the free AV's. Avira caught the most virusses, Avast just a smidgeon less but more user friendly and no ads. (Easy to re-register each year too)

My beef with most "Antivirus Packages" is that they've become too bloated (Performance degradation) and intrusive on your network. (PCs can't access eachother until you add their mac addies to the exception list and whatnot).

Also, unless you're going to poke the hornets nest you really shouldn't get infected.
I've always stuck to the free AV's and the last time I got infected was pretty much with the Stone virus and EXE bug back in the 90's

 

[Jimmy-Z]

I've been using AVG for a long time now. Just seems very reliable. Switched to AVG 2013 beta about a month ago & so far no problems. I really wouldn't trust MSE or FEP all that much, we use it here at work & it's let some crazy viruses thru, like sality & a couple others. But that might be our security management & not the antivirus. I just don't want to take the chance

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

MSE is a pretty basic solution, I only ever put it on someone's PC is they can't afford a paid alternative such as Kaspersky or ESET.

I've never had an issue with MSE - I've tried everything and after I used MSE at a lan once where I was the only PC not to get destroyed by viruses, I did a complete switch to MSE. Too many people still believe that you have to pay for your AV. Sure MSE is not technically free but its bundled with your M$ purchase of your OS.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

For an interesting read on which Antivirus is best (Windows 7) I found this review from PC Mag very informative.

That said, right now I will trust someone that wrote the API more with something new like Windows 8 than someone that only have access to the API's. Give me 6 months and my view might change completely.

The problem I have with a lot of paid products is they give you the impression they are actually doing something with regular popups of files being cleaned that have zero consequence to the safety of your PC (like browser history and cookies). Some also come with so much bloat added to give you the false impression of value.

If you really want a secure environment, then run your PC with Deep Freeze or just use Linux.