Anti Virus Software

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So we are fed up with Symantec Anti-virus. It slows down our outgoing and incoming emails when they have attachments, especially photos and their support is terrible. I don’t think anyone could make their sites for downloading and installing licenses any more complicated if they tried. Needless to say I was on their chat support for over an hour starting at eighth in the cue and finally got to 1 and then a message that no-one was available popped up and they disconnected me. So this is all to ask if any of you have input on Avast or Sonicwall for small business.???

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I replaced Norton with Avast some time ago, after I also got fed up with Symantec and it’s many problems.
It ( Avast ) seems to be doing a fine job and is easy to use and setup.

Welcome to the “I hate Norton” club.

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Antivirus choices have become similar to politics–the arguments and positions will go on and on, not that they shouldn’t, of course. The current PC World has a review of 8 antivirus programs for Vista-ready computers, as well as XP. Kaspersky and Norton 2007 are at the top of the list. Interestingly, the slowdown is 10% for each; BitDefender’s is 124%, and the others range from 2% to 9%. Other variables, of course, affect the overall rankings–ease of use, malware detection rate, proactive detection, etc. I guess in the end it’s all a tradeoff. I’ve used Norton for years and have not had a noticeable slowdown in the last two versions. Before then, that’s a different story.

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The PC World article, like most articles, omits importtant details.

Let’s ASSuME that KAV and NAV have the “same” impact on system performance.

As I undetstand it NAV 2007 still has the intrusive Norton Protection Center.
And KAV has a very annoying Proactive Defence, which is useless to the inexperienced user and, at best, a pain in the back rank, for experienced users, especially those using Office macros (see http://www.standards.com/Index.html?OfficeStuffExamples%5B/url%5D).

Such articles do not mention such details.

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In the interests of full disclosure.

In thepast 3 months, I replaced all the AV on my multiboot system wit KAV 6.
Amazing performance improvement.

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I know this’ll sound like an echo but I too use Avast free version. I switched a year ago and have had no problems or slowdowns that I’ve ever noticed. It’s an interesting article that Dennis posted, which happens to rate Avast pretty nicely. (I don’t know if there’s any performance variation between the free and paid versions.)

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We placed the free version of Avast on one of our systems as a trial and it seemed to do well. We are networked so need it to be running from the server and keep our server and all systems protected! I will check into the PCWorld reviews. I just know that the support for Norton is terrible and the slowdown is too frustrating. So no info on Sonicwall?

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Sorry, never heard of Sonicwall.

Not saying it’s good or bad, just no experience with it and have not heard of any comments on it pro or con.

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> this is all to ask if any of you have input on Avast or Sonicwall for small business.???

Presumably you are looking at avast! Standard Suite, an all software solution, and one of the SonicWall appliances. We use a SonicWall firewall, but not for antivirus. For antivirus we have used Trend Micro’s OfficeScan, now bundled with server and mail server components in various small business suites: Client Server Security for SMB and Client Server Messaging Security for SMB (includes Exchange filter). Easy deployment and good value, too. Disclosure: I also do legal work for Trend Micro.

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Does Trend have a freeware personal product?

(My company uses Trend AV, WebRoot Spysweeper Enterprise, and Zone Labs Integrity Agent Firewall (which uses broadcast enterprise firewall policy settings). They seem to work well.)

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Not that I know.

Joe

--Joe

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Trend does not have a free “real time” scanner; the online (on-demand) HouseCall scanner is free.

By clever use of annual sales and rebates, it is possible to own Trend Micro PC-Cillin Internet Security forever “free after rebate,” but it’s a bit of a hassle.

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Yeah, that’s why I stopped using after a number of satisfied years. As I said, for a “home” user with only two machines, I’m very satisfied with Avast.

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Hello BigAl, excuse my ignorance but does Avast serve the same purpose as AVG, would you suggest it has any advantages over the latter sufficient to warrant replacing it? Regards Dave.

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See post 675,053 and some of this thread: post 670,877

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