Z
zach
....if anyone cares...
I've been using avast for my home systems and have been very pleased with it
over the years. Have never gotten hit by a virus or other malware. But I'm VERY
careful about what I run on my PCs and restricting admin access to the kids has
apparently also been effective.
I needrf a product to recommend to small business clients who are generally much
more lax about opening attachments, downloading stuff, etc, no matter how much
you try to scare them, and have found that avast and avg aren't usually near the
top of the list in effectiveness. Most of these clients have - what else? -
Dells or HPs with McAfee or Symantec preloaded. And when those subscriptions
lapse, they are the first programs that I remove. Although these av programs are
excellent in terms of catching new strains and also have timely updates, their
bloat just impacts on performance too much especially on older machines. (Plus I
have very bad feelings towards McAfee in a previous incarnation where I had to
support tens of 1000s of machines in a corporate environment. This was
compounded by their recent disastrous 4715 update).
One of the rating sites gave Nod32, Kaspersky, F-Secure, Gdata AVK, and
Trustport the highest marks. Hop on over to their respective sites to look at
pricing and ordering. I quickly eliminated:
Gdata AVK: Price posted in euros only, single license only (no volume
discounts). No renewal information. Goodbye.
F-Secure: shopping cart had no quantity discount. The renewal link only upgrade
info with a price in euros that was more than the base product! Excuse me??
Trustport: Get a better english translator and make your site less convoluted to
find info. Prices were apparently only available via a downloadable xls file
which failed to download. No thanks!
That left Nod32 and Kaspersky. Both had quantity and multi-year discounts and
had an easy ordering process. Nod32 posted their 1 user renewal price; Kaspersky
sends a link with a renewal discount.
Both of these AV programs got very high ratings on web sites and - more
importantly - this user group over the years. At that point I felt it was a
toss-up and didn't need to get into other technical nitty gritty. Nod32 had a
better pricing, so they won.
zach
I've been using avast for my home systems and have been very pleased with it
over the years. Have never gotten hit by a virus or other malware. But I'm VERY
careful about what I run on my PCs and restricting admin access to the kids has
apparently also been effective.
I needrf a product to recommend to small business clients who are generally much
more lax about opening attachments, downloading stuff, etc, no matter how much
you try to scare them, and have found that avast and avg aren't usually near the
top of the list in effectiveness. Most of these clients have - what else? -
Dells or HPs with McAfee or Symantec preloaded. And when those subscriptions
lapse, they are the first programs that I remove. Although these av programs are
excellent in terms of catching new strains and also have timely updates, their
bloat just impacts on performance too much especially on older machines. (Plus I
have very bad feelings towards McAfee in a previous incarnation where I had to
support tens of 1000s of machines in a corporate environment. This was
compounded by their recent disastrous 4715 update).
One of the rating sites gave Nod32, Kaspersky, F-Secure, Gdata AVK, and
Trustport the highest marks. Hop on over to their respective sites to look at
pricing and ordering. I quickly eliminated:
Gdata AVK: Price posted in euros only, single license only (no volume
discounts). No renewal information. Goodbye.
F-Secure: shopping cart had no quantity discount. The renewal link only upgrade
info with a price in euros that was more than the base product! Excuse me??
Trustport: Get a better english translator and make your site less convoluted to
find info. Prices were apparently only available via a downloadable xls file
which failed to download. No thanks!
That left Nod32 and Kaspersky. Both had quantity and multi-year discounts and
had an easy ordering process. Nod32 posted their 1 user renewal price; Kaspersky
sends a link with a renewal discount.
Both of these AV programs got very high ratings on web sites and - more
importantly - this user group over the years. At that point I felt it was a
toss-up and didn't need to get into other technical nitty gritty. Nod32 had a
better pricing, so they won.
zach
