ESET NOD-32

[RJM62]

I may (or may not) have posted about this before... but I'm too lazy to check. I was reminded about it because I just planted some ads for this product on one of my sites.

I've been farting around with computers for a long time -- since the 1970's, in fact. In that time, I've probably used every major antivirus program out there.

I must say, ESET NOD-32 is the only one I've used that I've been 100 percent happy with. I've been using it for a few years now on all my Windows machines, and I can't think of a bad thing to say about it. It's never missed a piece of malware; it has very good heuristics with almost no false positives; it's solidly locked me out of probably dozens of sites that had recently been hijacked or compromised; it does a better job of keeping up with OS patches and updates than Windows Update does; and it has a nice, small footprint and very modest resource usage.

All of the antivirus vendors seem to have their "golden ages," and I've sworn by others over the years. But NOD-32 has enjoyed a longer tenure as my favorite than any other I've used thus far.

Just thought I'd share that, for whatever it's worth.

-Rich

 

[kyleb]

Interesting. My ISP provides Norton for free. I've had fewer problems in the 2 years with it than the 2 previous years w/ Eset.

Go figure.

 

[poadeleted21]

We tried it at my consulting company and it was a dog.

 

[RJM62]

Interesting. My ISP provides Norton for free. I've had fewer problems in the 2 years with it than the 2 previous years w/ Eset.

Go figure.

I swore off Symantec products years ago... Their products were just too... huge. They consumed so much resources that the machines might have been better off infected.

Norton's stuff was also very noisy. Every stupid thing it did, it had to brag about. "File abc.xyz has been scanned and found safe!" Shut up. You're a virus scanner. That's what you're supposed to do. Tell me when you find something wrong.

One of my old tech support clients actually worked for Symantec -- and he got so disgusted that he started using something else (Trend, I think) on his own computers.

However, that was years ago, and I'm told that Symantec re-worked all their stuff; so maybe it's better now. For my part, I've been very pleased with ESET.

-Rich

 

[RJM62]

We tried it at my consulting company and it was a dog.

In what way?

 

[poadeleted21]

In what way?

Mainly, it fought with visual studio and perpetually insisted on scanning files every time they were modified.

 

[RJM62]

Mainly, it fought with visual studio and perpetually insisted on scanning files every time they were modified.

Ah, okay. That's not one of the programs I use, but I have noticed that it does that whenever Adobe Creative Cloud updates -- which is often, since I have a ton of their stuff installed. But it's never caused any problems. The little icon spins around for a second or two the first time I start the application after the update, but that's that.

-Rich

 

[acluffpoa]

I've used ESET NOD32 for about 5 years now myself for all the reasons you mention. Great product!

 

[CT4ME]

NOD is a good product, small and capable. 'Generally great ratings... And our experiences have been good.
It's worth remembering that most viruses no longer attack your computer, the OS, or the browser... They attack you. If they can pop something up that can cause you to click it, they will get around almost all antivirus programs. Even if they detect it, it will be too late. They get under the operating system and can't be touched. At this point, it takes special procedures and programs to remove the pests.
FWIW, we're OK with many products (nod,bit defender,viper,avast, among others), but we generally recommend Microsoft security essentials for those wanting a free solution. Malwarebytes is a good product, and is worthy of a few $$$ to work with your AV solution.