Just curious, but I know that norton isn't. It uses alot of resources, and the AVG free one slowed down my system quite a bit when I tried it before. Can anyone recommend an antivirus that is system resource friendly? I've done without an antivirus for 2 years now, and becuase I know what im doing, I have never gotten a virus. However, things change, and now that I do alot more downloading, double clicking a program could lead to a virus infection. For 2 years I have downloaded only from trusted sites (demos and stuff) and generally downloaded content that is virus free (music/video). I don't use an open email like shaw or telus, instead I use virus free hotmail. But times are changing and I want to use my shawmail, and im not even going to consider it until I get some form of antivirus. any recommendations? thx
All the better ones will use more CPU time, as the ones that don't use as much CPU resources, are also the ones that don't catch as many viruses/virii/whatever. AVG is less of a hog than Norton, and I like it well enough. Mostly, I don't run the background scanner; just the e-mail scanner, and scanning files from the context menu (right-click menu) of files I just downloaded.
The great anandtech thread on security: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=33&threadid=1658987&enterthread=y If you scroll down a bit he shows a variety of AV progs and the ammount of resources they take up. Looks like AVG does the minimal ammount of hurt
Norton antivirus 2005 does take up about 32MB of system RAM to run in the background, That is because it is always protecting your system. If you want something thats not as safe but doesnt use as much ram then get PC Chillin.
trust me, nod32 is the best you'll find. check out the vb100: Results Overview: Eset (NOD32) Results summary 33 Success / 3 Failure / 5 No Entry
I use AVG, but that alone is not enough I use Anti vir, both free, and Edwido, I think is the name, only 30 days free, but it scanned and found something on my system on the 1st try, Also I keep PC Cillin as a backup, and online you have Panda and Trend, which are both excellent onlin scanners, but Ive found that only 1 Anti Virus prog is not enough protection, but 3, I never have any problems now that I have all this protection and most of it's free.
why even use virus scanners if you dont want one that'll do a good job... may as well not even use one...
kaspersky all the way. regularly updated defs through the DAY, not every other day. returns better results than other av's out there. 2nd place goes to symantec av enterprise edition, ALOT less bloated than norton av but still has a couple ding-a-lings lingering in the background
honestly, turst me on this, nod32. anyone who says kapersky is easy on resources is wrong. it's a super av, but pretty resource heavy.
Just to update this thread, but I got a free copy of mcafee from work (prize). It was a week before I finally gave it a shot on my notebook. In terms of speed, it blows away shaw secure. Shaw secure, I will never use again, not becuase its bad, but it takes up huge amounts of resources compared to mcafee! The notebook is much much faster and still secure now.
