Security Updates As Of May 03, 2009

AVG anti-virus: Worthless and predatory.

Avast: Reasonable but crashes Vista X64 SP2.

Norton anti-virus: Worthless and expensive, can’t even begin to tell you how many infected systems I’ve seen using Norton, and it appears to be oblivious to all the crap it lets in.

McAfee: See Norton, far more prevalent since users get a crippled version of it through their ISP and think they’re being protected by something.

Microsoft Windows Defender: *Snorts, tries not to laugh, can’t hold it back…BAHAHA!!!*

Lavasoft Ad-Aware: Lavasoft Payusmore.

Spybot S&D: Good choice, lots of options that Windows Pretender doesn’t have.

Nod32: Decent detection rate, unfortunately they have also been known to classify legitimate applications they don’t want you to have as Spyware. (Peerguardian, which is installed per the user’s choice) Seems like they just shoot first and ask questions later.

Avira: I use this, turn off Windows Pretender, and have done with the whole circus of crapware.

Your mileage may vary!

Do you use Windows Defender sir, and, if so, feel favorably about it? Thank you.

Hi Buffet,
No I don’t. I prefer choosing my own protection[s]. With that being said, for most casual computer users I believe that WD is fine.

Regards, Ron

Ryan, thanks for the insight. Ron, I don’t use it either. Now I feel better about it.

Everything that I’ve seen places Windows Defender at catching about 40-50% of general spyware.

That’s pretty pathetic when you look at the AV Comparatives website and see that the freeware Avira Antivir catches 99.7% of threats overall (scoring first place) and 99.1% in the “Other Malware” (spyware) category.

Microsoft’s expensive Windows Onecare got 17th place (last place), catching only 87.1% overall and 77.6% of spyware.

Over the last couple of years, Microsoft’s Onecare has never emerged from last place, being trampled even by freeware.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report21.pdf