WOW, no NATIVE x64 antivirus..

[Chappy]

I pay attention to Virus Bulletin ratings, and whether or not an AV program/firewall can pass West Coast Labs testing, and ICSA Labs testing. My feelings are is if a program can't get all three of these certifications, it isn't worth touching with a 10 foot pole.

Yep, but I think you should use a Longer pole really...

Software firewalls alone are a joke in my opinion, give some hacker enough time, and said hacker will find a way to hack the software firewall, and be in one's system, and before the user knows it, they're system is comprised like you wouldn't believe.

Fortunately tho, hackers are mostly scriptkiddies looking to create a quick botnet so they're scanning huge IP blocks for the easiest vulnerability that can get them inside. They're not about to spend any time for a single machine so S'ware Firewalls are more than enough protection fo 95% of users. You have to have something that hacker wants badly enough for them to spend time trying different ways to defeat your firewall before they'll be going to extremes for a single machine.
And todays s'ware firewalls have really gone thru a hardening process and are much more robust than even 2 years ago. A top ranked firewall today can defeat almost all known system deficiencies, Matousec runs the most comprehensive battery of tests that I've ever seen using the most difficult hacks known to test firewalls and some are nailing every one of them.

Windows Live OneCare? *ducks*

LOL!
Ahmen..pretty much a useless bit of s'ware.

Now, let's hope this thread can die a quick death and fade to page 594 so nobody can find it anymore. Then we can start a useful thread to continue this type of conversation in...
Or maybe we can have it re-titled so other future members can see that this "32bit process in a 64bit AV program" is a non-issue regarding safety or quality of the product.

 

[chevell]

I have been using AVG anti-virus for 64-bit OS for three months on WIN Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and it not only works, IT'S FREE!

I guess you didn't notice the pop up screen advertisment everytime you start up with the AVG?
I can't stand "free" programs that do that.

I will say that the latest version of AVG although a bit bloated and slow did manage to catch a couple of adware's and got rid of them. It was some hateful one that kept making my browser go to some obscure anti virus site of all things.

 

[John Hoffman]

When my PC boots, AVG is loaded automatically, and it updates itself automatically. I admit that I see the advertisement on the rare occasions when I need to tweak a setting, but otherwise, not. I feel that since it's free, if I have to look at some advertising in return for a valuable service, that's okay.

 

[johngalt]

John,

Thanks for your comments- it is *amazing* how many people want free products *with* updates and never even consider how much it costs just to have a server that hosts the requisite files for downloading, not to mention the prohibitive cost of bandwidth when you host a file that is downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. Even a small 1 K sized file, if it gets downloaded 100,000 times per month, all of a sudden is accounting for 100 MB of your total bandwidth. Most end users that don't run servers won't understand why this is important, but those of us that do realize that we get charged money for bandwidth packages, and if we exceed those charges either our host temporarily disables our site or else we have to pay a hefty surcharge.

If I am offering a free product and I am paying all this money for bandwidth (and hosting sites with mid- to high-level bandwidth is *not* cheap - don't think in terms of tens of dollars per year or even per month - it gets expensive *fast*) then I need to have a way to recoup my expenses - and that means either eating them myself (and hopefully getting some back in my taxes) or else advertising.

Now, I don't particularly care for AVG, but you cannot expect a company to make it only on sales when they offer a free product. If they weren't using Ask I'd back them 100% - but I have to demur from supporting this particular revenue source because I *DETEST* Ask.

however, they are not wrong in making their free product adware - I mean, let's face it - the other alternative is to offer only a paid version.

Oh, they have another option - hope that users who keep complaining about the advertising will all of a sudden up and donate a million dollars to them specifically for bandwidth. But I don't expect them to hold their collective breath on this one.

 

[ltwally]

Memory hog....
That is all I can say.....

Maybe for a system with 256MB RAM.

Want a real memory hog? McAfee is the worst. I've seen it's process using 150MB at one point. I'm forced to bear with it at work. The company I work for uses it.

Be fair. Both Symantec/Norton and McAfee suck horribly. HORRIBLY. They catch fewer threats than most of their competitors, and yet take up a good deal of system resources.

I'm sorry. I don't want to offend anyone... but only the uneducated and inexperienced use either.

BitDefender, however, is a very solid product for stand-alone PC's or laptops. It is fast, takes little resources, and catches more viruses than Symantec or McAfee.

For the corporate sector, I usually recommend a Trend Micro client/server based product.

 

[WildEagle]

I pay attention to Virus Bulletin ratings, and whether or not an AV program/firewall can pass West Coast Labs testing, and ICSA Labs testing. My feelings are is if a program can't get all three of these certifications, it isn't worth touching with a 10 foot pole.

Yep, but I think you should use a Longer pole really...

Software firewalls alone are a joke in my opinion, give some hacker enough time, and said hacker will find a way to hack the software firewall, and be in one's system, and before the user knows it, they're system is comprised like you wouldn't believe.

Fortunately tho, hackers are mostly scriptkiddies looking to create a quick botnet so they're scanning huge IP blocks for the easiest vulnerability that can get them inside. They're not about to spend any time for a single machine so S'ware Firewalls are more than enough protection fo 95% of users. You have to have something that hacker wants badly enough for them to spend time trying different ways to defeat your firewall before they'll be going to extremes for a single machine.
And todays s'ware firewalls have really gone thru a hardening process and are much more robust than even 2 years ago. A top ranked firewall today can defeat almost all known system deficiencies, Matousec runs the most comprehensive battery of tests that I've ever seen using the most difficult hacks known to test firewalls and some are nailing every one of them.

Windows Live OneCare? *ducks*

LOL!
Ahmen..pretty much a useless bit of s'ware.

Now, let's hope this thread can die a quick death and fade to page 594 so nobody can find it anymore. Then we can start a useful thread to continue this type of conversation in...
Or maybe we can have it re-titled so other future members can see that this "32bit process in a 64bit AV program" is a non-issue regarding safety or quality of the product.

Sorry if I offend you or any one else, but Live OneCare is far better than that Norton and McAfee junk. It uses less system resources, gets frequent updates, and has a better virus detection rate than Norton or McAfee, neither of which can get a VB100 rating, along with an ICSA or Westcoast Labs certification. So what that it missed one VB100 test, that happened shortly after version 1.5 came out, and that turned out to be a bug in the program. It's firewall is also better than the firewall built in to Windows Vista. I have the backup portion of the program disabled, as I don't really need it.

Live OneCare sits in the background, and does it's thing without causing performance problems. With version 2.5, Microsoft fine tuned the program, and fixed a lot of bugs. I by the way beta tested versions 2.0 and 2.5 of Live OneCare, and didn't find no bugs with either version.

The problems with Live OneCare are generally due to I D 10(idiot aka user error), and no I don't work for Microsoft, I switched to Live OneCare, as I got tired of blowing tons of money on 3rd party products such as those from Norton, McAfee and Trend Micro and running in to a lot of problems, including performance problems with my OS.

Also a user has to use their head, and learn not to open email that didn't come from somebody they know, an learn to avoid suspicious websites.

I certainly hope this thread dies a horrible death, and ends up in the pit of no return.

 

[dmex]

This has got way off-topic...

Thread Closed.