protection

[judd]

whats the best virus protection?

[wilderness]

whats the best virus protection?

stop clicking on crap you shouldn't be clicking on ;)

[njcurveball]

whats the best virus protection?

Mcaffee is the current "Big Dog" in the industry as Norton has lost a lot of steam in the last 5 years. Many big corporations have switched from Norton and smaller vendors like Trend.

The key is to have one that gets a quick update as the playing field is very equal for known viruses 6 months old or older.

Since Mcaffee has a larger client base, they will probably catch any new ones quicker than the others.

I am not saying they are the "best", but catching a virus and updating your local protection a day early, rather than a day late is a big edge.

Just remember most damage done to private computers these days is from Malware, Spyware, and background processes that you do not even know are running.

Programs loaded in the background can do things like sending every keystroke to a "collector" or allocating 25 to 50% of your CPU to another processor.

It is a moronic industry where they will go after a poor Mother for downloading a song, yet they do not make any effort to catch all of the Malware and Spyware hackers.

Jim

[headhawg]

stop clicking on crap you shouldn't be clicking on ;)Or installing things that you shouldn't be installing. ;)

That said, it's not as easy to find just a straight anti-virus program anymore. They get bundled into "security suites" which include anti-malware, firewall, and anti-spam programs. I would say that they are about all equal in detecting viruses, so it comes down to what additional features you might want and which program is not as much of a resource hog. I haven't used Norton in a long while, but it was very bad in terms of eating up system resources. I have very recently tried the McAfee suite. After installing it, it took my laptop five minutes to boot up. I'll pass, thank you.

If you're careful you can probably get away with using programs that are free. (When I say careful, I mean stay away from pop-up ads and pr0n sites.) You need three essentials: firewall, anti-spyware, and anti-virus programs. Try Zone Alarm's basic (free) firewall or the one from Comodo. Windows firewall is not enough as it only blocks incoming not outgoing network connections.

Spybot S & D is a good free anti-spyware program. And you really should have two as no program will catch all of the malware. I currently am using CounterSpy as well which I like a lot. I also have BOClean from Comodo (free) running as well. It's my "real-time" (meaning always running) anti-malware program. I use CounterSpy to do scans of memory, the registry, and my files.

And for anti-virus, try the free program from AVG. I am currently using Nod32, a commercial program, on my desktop and AVG on my laptop. I like Nod32 as it doesn't use a lot of resources but I wouldn't say it's the "best". It has done it's job when it needed to and I guess that's about all you can ask.

[ny0707ny]

I use Trend Micro Internet Security for many years. I love it. As far as I know it catches all stuff. It is a great program.