Antivirus Guys Professional Virus Removal Advice

The best antivirus software on the market today has to have a memory resident active shield of some kind watching for virus like activities. It also needs to have an inbound firewall to prevent infections from worms crawling across the internet in search of open ports to crawl through. It is not enough to simply have the resident shield. The best antivirus software would include both.

Another important capability of good antivirus software is the ability to detect and remove other types of malware. Other types of malware like rogue antivirus programs; spyware, adware and Trojans are far more prevalent than the old style viruses of yesterday. These are the real threats in today’s internet dependant world.

There are some more complete security software suites on the market today that take antivirus protection to the next level. Some programs will monitor your Google , Yahoo and MSN searches where they analyze the search results before you even click on them. Some of them refer to this as a phishing filter. By doing this, the Internet security software can warn you in advance that the site you are about to visit is infected with some type of malicious code.

When people bring their computers in for virus infection repairs, you get to see the most common types of infections. The most common types of infections these days are malware that has been contracted from an infected website. The computer user inadvertently visits an infected site which makes them far more vulnerable to infection. If their security updates aren’t up to date or if they have inadequate virus protection, they are far more likely to get infected. Educated web users will take all reasonable precautions to minimize the chance of being exposed to these types of situations thereby increasing the efficacy of their antivirus program or security suite.

Antivirus Software Reviews

Let’s look at some of the most popular antivirus programs on the market and see how they compare to one another. We’re going to look at Symantec’s Norton products, McAfee, Trend Micro, AVG, CA Associates, Kaspersky and Panda antivirus software packages. Please note that I am a computer technician who deals with virus infections on a daily basis. My opinions are biased based on what I see in the field. I am not a software engineer or programmer. I can only speak from personal experience with these programs.

Symantec’s Products:

• Norton Antivirus 2009 – This is an excellent antivirus product which includes both the resident shield as well as an inbound firewall. In my opinion it is lacking in its ability to deal with spyware infections even though they advertise an antispyware version. I believe that using Norton Antivirus 2009 in conjunction with an excellent antispyware program provides an excellent level of protection. Symantec greatly improved their core antivirus product in 2009. It was a major improvement over the 2008 version. The 2008 version was very bulky and consumed way too many system resources. The 2008 software was capable of bringing a normally functioning computer to a near useless state because of how much computer power it took to run. This was especially true for computers that were more than two years old. This is no longer the case with 2009. Good job Symantec engineers. It’s about time.

 

• Norton Internet security – Overall, this product provides one of the highest levels of security you can get from the big antivirus software manufacturers. The product is very good at general security. It’s main drawback again is the excessive use of system resources. It seems that the antivirus manufacturers like to neglect the fact that there are tons of low end Walmart purchased computer systems out in the general public. Some of the entry level computers lack the CPU cache and ram necessary to multitask large programs in a normal environment. The end result is that when the consumer installs the program, they notice a major decrease in overall computer performance. The computer now takes forever to boot up. It might be slow to respond to mouse clicks. People don’t realize this until after they buy the product. Then they are stuck with it as the stores won’t let you return opened software.

 

• Norton 360 – This is one of the most popular antivirus and security suites on the market today. It is very comprehensive in what it does. The security it provides is top notch. The downside to this product is that it comes bundled with some extra bells and whistles that I feel are really inappropriate for a security suite. For instance, it offers the end user an online backup. If I were to guess what percentage of people actually uses this feature, I would say it is around two percent. Maybe it’s even lower. One thing I do know is that I do not like installing software on my computer that I don’t intend to use. IT is a waste of hard drive space and other system resources. Symantec could have done better with this product. They need to focus solely on what people want from them, which is virus and malware protection. They needn’t worry about anything else like data backup. If you have just purchased a new decent computer that has 6 or more megabytes of CPU cache and at least 3 megabytes of ram then this product should run pretty well.

My vote for the best Symantec product for the average home user would be the standard Norton Antivirus 2009. I would also use a solid antispyware program to complement it.

McAfee Products:

• McAfee Virus Scan Plus – I equate this antivirus product on the same level as Norton Antivirus 2009. It has a small footprint on your system’s resources. It has the most necessary protection components including an inbound firewall and virus shield. This is overall an excellent product without the bells and whistles of the next level product.

 

• McAfee Internet security – Again I would equate this product to Norton Internet Security. Obviously these two companies compete neck and neck like Ford and General Motors. IT has the same plusses and drawbacks as the other Internet Security Suites. There are some additional minor protection features. There are some additional features that almost everyone can live without. Again the tradeoff for these extra features is a slower overall computer system. That is not a fair tradeoff to me. Maybe it is for you though.

 

• McAfee Total Protection – This is the most thorough product on the market from McAfee. It contains all the features of the Internet Security Suite plus they allow you to install it on up to three computers. That is a bargain considering it costs the same price as a single Norton license. The main drawback here is the unnecessary features and the heavy burden it places on your system’s startup time.

Overall, I like the basic McAfee Virus Scan plus the best. IT is one of the cheaper antivirus programs available and it does what it is supposed to do. I have also been pleasantly surprised recently at McAfee’s ability remove some unwanted malware from computers. For the price this is probably the best value in antivirus protection.

AVG products by Grisoft

• Free AVG Antivirus – This company has successfully capitalized on a marketing strategy of giving free basic virus protection away to home users for free. I have to admit that as far as free utilities on the internet go, this has got to be one of the best. This is an excellent antivirus product with an excellent track record of detecting threats that some of the other big guys have missed. The free version lacks the inbound firewall making it substantially inferior to the paid products. However, for doing manual scans of your computer, this antivirus program kicks butt. For very savvy computer users, this product combined with an adequate antispyware product provides solid detection and removal capabilities. The paid version of the basic antivirus program isn’t that much of an upgrade. It does allow for the increased detection of rootkits which are an increasingly popular type of infection.

 

• AVG Internet Security – Several years ago, this company bought a leading antispyware and malware detection software product called Ewido. Ewido was one of the best at what it did. They then took the exceptional detection capabilities of that product and built it into their Internet Security program. This gave Grisoft a rock solid software program to rival the best Symantec and McAfee had to offer. This is a very good product that you can count on to get the job done.

Other Popular Antivirus Software Products:

Trend Micro

They also offer the three tiered approach to antivirus protection. The minimal version, which I would choose among the three s called Trend Micro Antivirus & Antispyware 2009. They also have an Internet Security and Internet Security Pro Version. Their product is very good. However, I don’t think this company has the resources to set the market trends in virus protection. They are merely a follower to the lead of Symantec and McAfee. I don’t know how this company successfully markets its home user products against the giants in the antivirus industry.