Vista - Whats the Best Antivirus/ Security Suite??

I would still suggest Norton 2009, i bought Norton 2008, and they were offering a free software upgrade for 2008 owners so i took it and its perfect, it removes all threats and everything, even though you had a norton product before i highly suggest you try Norton 2009

Norton 2009 is good, but it is lacking in hueristic capabilities. Essentially what this means is it performs poorly in detection of new threats, and may result in infection/data corruption as the malware cannot be detected by the antivirus engine without a definition telling it what to look for- as opposed to the engine being able to look for attributes that are earmarks of malware or trojan payloads. In otherwords, the engine is dumb, and must be told what to look for and tag as a threat.

Here's something I didn't realize or even consider. Windows Defender in Vista. I was testing out an anti-virus program and decided to visit E.I.C.A.R. When I clicked on the dummy viruses, Windows Defender popped up, alerting me to a threat, marked severe.

Here is an example:

EICAR dummy viruses are the silliest thing that any AV will catch.

wow.. i didn't realize this got a sticky from long, long ago.. Thats cool

I hope this thread has helped others get the best AV or security like it did when i first made the thread.

I've since used ESET NOD32 ever since this thread. I love it and continue to use NOD32 to this day.

Even works in Win 7.

Thanks. and good luck everyone.

+1 on that. NOD32 is the most effective AV for windows. Even i have been using NOD32 since its version 4 launched.

Yes. I was surprised to see this, since I was testing another anti-virus; thinking the test program would've popped up first.

I have Kaspersky 2009 and it's not to bad. Its fast, lite, and smooth running. The only thing is that it runs dskchk utility 3 or 4 times a month, but other than that i reccomend it for everyone.

You guys all need to realize this forum is all about personal opinion. Some prefer NOD32, some prefer Kaspersky, some prefer Norton, etc. etc. It all depends on what you like. There is no absolutely dominate Anti-virus software. Some catch viruses that others don't. If you want to go from the stats, NOD32 is the best. Just check the ratings (I believe the link to these ratings were posted earlier in the thread). An anti-virus is good, but the 4 most important things to have, in my opinion, are a good firewall (ZoneAlarm and Comodo are very good), a website advisor (such as WOT or McAfee SiteAdvisor), updating your programs (A nice program to check this for you is Secunia OSI or PSI), and last but not least, smart internet browsing (Possibly the most important). If you have/do these 4 things, you lower your chance of getting a virus greatly. It's still good to have a good anti-virus though, just in case

Eset Smart Security 4.