Seriously. Considering how good NAV is at sucking up memory and CPU cycles, the only way anyone probably noticed was when their computer suddenly seemed much smoother and more responsive.
Seriously. Considering how good NAV is at sucking up memory and CPU cycles, the only way anyone probably noticed was when their computer suddenly seemed much smoother and more responsive.
I agree. I am a computer services provider for mostly home users and I often find NAV and internet tools to be single greatest contributor to draining system resources. I usually recommend disabling NAV, using safe internet practices, and scanning weekly or if there appears to be a problem.
I switched to Symantec AntiVirus a while ago and it seems to be much better. My school also runs this. I remember that Norton was a slow piece. This one labeled as just Symantec AntiVirus seems to only take up less 2MB of RAM at the most. Anyone else have an opinion on this version?
Getting definitions is exactly the same as Norton, but without a yearly subscription.
Probably enterprise version versus home version: the home version is a piece of crap.. The enterprise version was kinda lean last time I had an encounter with it. It's still no exuse.
That is most likely the Corperate version of Symantec AV, which is *far* better than the desktop version that most people usually purchase. The corp version just sits in the tray until something comes along that might need some attention.
One of my clients had MASSIVE issues with it gobbling all available memory and swap. Seriously. 2.8Ghz P4 systems with 512MB of RAM running like slideshows.
Here's a screenie of the process monitor from one of those machines. Notice the Commit Charge. 1.9GB at the moment. Max was 2.4GB. And what's eating the most memory?
rtvscan (Symantec Antivirus) with 871MB (at the moment). It was actually giving memory back, so it wasn't a stupid little
Yes it's called not forcing people to use your products even though they resent them because they have to in order to be able to do business. Apple, like most other companies isn't compelled to do harm to their own customers by locking them into their own products at every turn. Unsurprisingly companies who don't treat their stakeholders the way Microsoft has don't have armies of disgruntled users forced into using their product every day, and don't have armies of people creating malicious software for that
"Yes it's called not forcing people to use your products even though they resent them because they have to in order to be able to do business. Apple, like most other companies isn't compelled to do harm to their own customers by locking them into their own products at every turn."
Why is it that Apple keeps their hardware closed from everyone then? Apple do use vendor lock in all the time: the iPod/iTunes is a prime example. They'd locked their customers in at every step of the way. You clearly are spo
Apple, like most other companies isn't compelled to do harm to their own customers by locking them into their own products at every turn.
Oh, you mean like QuickTime and the.mov format? Or iPod and iTunes? Or their one-button mice? Or the nonstandard MPEG file extensions? Or their photocasting feeds that violate the RSS specifications? Or how they only support Mac OS on hardware that they supply? Or 90% of everything else that Apple has ever produced?
Yeah, it's called sensible user permissions. If you could run most apps in non admin and set up the file permissions properly, you'd eliminate a lot of viruses as a side effect. OSX does most of this by default.
"If you could run most apps in non admin and set up the file permissions properly, you'd eliminate a lot of viruses as a side effect."
This assumes that if an OS like OSX was relevant, virus writers would write viruses for it that assumed admin/root permissions. Malware doesn't *need* root/admin permissions to carry our their primary tasks.
Malware doesn't *need* root/admin permissions to carry our their primary tasks.
No, and biological disease doesn't need poor hygiene, sharing of used needles by intravenous drug users, or unprotected sex with multiple partners in order to propagate, either.
The reason default-admin access under Windows is the norm is not that it's irrelevant to security.
The reason that other OS'es -- which don't provide admin access by default -- are more secure is not coincidence.
Do seat belts and air bags stop ignorant drivers from killing themselves in car accidents?
Do firewalls and sprinkler systems stop innocent people from dying in fires?
If Vista is done right, it will slow it down. No OS can protect against total stupidity, but a decent design with decent defaults (which XP lacks) can make a big difference.
If you don't need a yearly subscription, you probably have the corporate edition, which, for some reason, is far leaner and more polished than the home version.
[quote]...which, for some reason...[/quote] Profit? Larger companies and their licencing probably make a lot more money for them than the home licences do.
A lot of the home installations they have are probably due to preinstallation and bundling, where the user doesn't realize how much slower it's making their system, because they only have experience with it installed and running. So, why bother making it leaner? It's just going to cost more.
However, the corporate users generally have IT guys who have somew
But how would it get the poor reputation if the majority of its users are unaware of how poor it performs? It's not like they would have ready access to the corporate edition to compare it to.
/* Only that the poor reputation of the consumer version tarnishs the image of the corperate version.*/
Not necessarily. After all, Trend Micro, which doesn't have much of a name among the home antivirus market has a fairly large presence on the corporate side.
I use it and like it, but 2MB of RAM is a joke. RTVscan uses 22.5MB, DefWatch uses 1.2MB, VPTray uses 3.8MB, and the update program uses 5MB, at least on mine.
Well that's not surprising considering NAV runs at least 14 processes. I think it might be 15 including that glorified advertisement they call Norton Protection Center.
We're still selling it at the shop that I work at. I'm not sure why... We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
Also have a look at E-SET NOD32. They've actually got heuristics working properly., the window between virus release, vendor awareness followed by vendor update isn't fast enough these days and NOD32 seems to trump them all with their effective heuristics. Last week whilst selecting a replacement anti-virus for our existing Symantec Corporate installation, I was lucky enough to receive a virus sample by e-mail (to an otherwise unfiltered mailbox). I received this virus at 18:05, Kaspersky first became awar
We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
AVG is an excellent product. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now with zero problems, minimal performance/CPU/RAM impact, etc. I am so impressed with it that I am actually going to pay for it, despite the free version working "good enough" for me.
At work, NAV sucks my computer dry. Sure, it works well enough, but the cure is worse than the disease. Too bad my employer is in bed with MS and Norton, no room for AVG...
Would not recommend AVG free, its been a consistant low performer as to viruss found for many years.
If price is the pinch try Avast!
If you have $30AU ($18US) get trend pccillin oem bundle, can usually track em down fairly easy, it does use some resources (mainly ram) but actually gets most of the baddies.
Of course if you want good protection and low resources get kaspersky:)
For the home-users I support I always install AVG-free [grisoft.com], great package. The only disadvantage is the updater for winme/win98 stations, having to download a 2 MB updatefile a couple of times a week is a pain in the ass for people with a 56k modem. At some offices I use f-prot [f-prot.com]. Hardly any recources and I didn't have a slip-through up till now. Mcaffeee, Norton and Sophos were all memory-hoggs is my experience...
You use Norton at the office? It's corporate sibling, Symantec AntiVirus, runs far lighter and has much better deployment tools. While far from perfect (I have a list), it is much better than the home user oriented NAV.
We used to do the same, then we just started using AVG Pro for businesses. Problem is, Symantec has a much more thorough virus database, and AVG's detection rate just isn't there for me. Nod32 has been the answer to all my problems.
AVG may run fast, but I've found that its not quite as good as other (non-free) products at catching viruses
Virus Bulletin [virusbtn.com] (BugMeNot Required [bugmenot.com]) does tests of about 30 different antivirus programmes on various versions of windows from NT4 to Server 2003.
They set up computers with the various AV software, and infect the computers with currently common viruses and see which ones catch them. The resuls of 44 of these tests since 1998 for some of the major AV programmes are as follows;
Dude, get your story straight. NAV does not run 14 processes (I got it running at work and at home) and I can identify 4 NAV processes running at about 24 MB. I don't use NPC but I've seen others people running it and it does consume alot more memory/processes. So be it NPC is a resource hog but don't knock NAV, it is not a terrible antivirus product by itself afterall.
I have found NOD32 to be a far superior product to Norton and Mcafee (not that it's hard to be a superior product)... extremely low system utilization, I don't even notice it's there, until a virus warning pops up (such as the few email viruses that get past the filters on my mail server).
It also proactively stopped all the common WMF exploits.
Seriously, are you advising your customers to run without any antivirus solution in place AT ALL? What is your advice to them on service packs and regular software updates, firewall, etc?
"Safe internet practices" involve all of the above. And that's just for starters.
Yes, I do recommend other antivirus solutions, usually NOD32, but many users are reluctant to remove NAV. This is often because they do not like to feel that they have wasted their subscription fees.
When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine.
And besides, what kind of antivirus system lets some random program delete it's files, causing it to stop protecting the user's machine?
And besides, what kind of antivirus system lets some random program delete it's files,
From TFA, it's apparently deleting registry entries, not the files. Another advantage of the monolithic Windows registry; anything can fuck up anything else.
And besides, what kind of antivirus system lets some random program delete it's files, causing it to stop protecting the user's machine?
It isn't "some random program", it is a Microsoft program, with free access to all the undocumented APIs in Windows - I'm sure that Microsoft left themselves loopholes all over the place. In fact I suspect that the majority of Windows security problems were deliberately put there to act as backdoor for Microsoft to do something like this.
I agree. I am a computer services provider for mostly home users and I often find NAV and internet tools to be single greatest contributor to draining system resources. I usually recommend disabling NAV, using safe internet practices, and scanning weekly or if there appears to be a problem.
Oh yeah, but I've yet to find any antivirus software which doesn't do this.
I have also found that attempting to educate users about safe Internet practices is futile at best. I do, quite literally, have my father as th
I am sure that Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware uses less CPU and memory, what with all the undocumented Windows features which were mysteriously used in their software.
Did you forget? They were ordered to document all the undocumented APIs they'd been using, and they did just that [microsoft.com].
There are some really useful things in there. I don't know how I ever managed to write a decent Windows program before I had access to PathYetAnotherMakeUniqueName() [microsoft.com].
Oh yeah, but I've yet to find any antivirus software which doesn't do this.
Agreed. At work, we switched to McAfee. It appears to be marginally better, but I have been toying with creating a support message to facetiously ask for a second laptop under the explanation that my primary laptop is already fully allocated to other "colleagues". The virus scanner, spyware scanners, system inventory scanner, software firewall, and mobile backup solution have conspired to use most of my system resources nearly 1
Having had to use and support enough Microsoft crap over the years, I consider it to be suspicious that there's a "problem" appearing after Microsoft introduces a competing product.
Although I am sure that Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware uses less CPU and memory, what with all the undocumented Windows features which were mysteriously used in their software.
Their anti-virus is Kaspersky, because they bought that too. Kaspersky is the only antivirus besides Nod I would use, but Nod is faster I think and also still independently owned.
That's not correct. They bought the anti-virus arm of GeCAD, a Romanian company. Kaspersky, a Russian anti-virus company, is still entirely independant.
What problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What problem? (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. I am a computer services provider for mostly home users and I often find NAV and internet tools to be single greatest contributor to draining system resources. I usually recommend disabling NAV, using safe internet practices, and scanning weekly or if there appears to be a problem.
Re:What problem? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
It's still no exuse.
Re:What problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Symantec runs leaner? I dunno about that. (Score:1)
Sometimes it does.
One of my clients had MASSIVE issues with it gobbling all available memory and swap. Seriously. 2.8Ghz P4 systems with 512MB of RAM running like slideshows.
http://charles.borner.us/Pegged.JPG [borner.us]
Here's a screenie of the process monitor from one of those machines. Notice the Commit Charge. 1.9GB at the moment. Max was 2.4GB. And what's eating the most memory?
rtvscan (Symantec Antivirus) with 871MB (at the moment). It was actually giving memory back, so it wasn't a stupid little
Re:What problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
I just switched [apple.com].
Re:What problem? (Score:3)
Re:What problem? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:What problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Unsurprisingly companies who don't treat their stakeholders the way Microsoft has don't have armies of disgruntled users forced into using their product every day, and don't have armies of people creating malicious software for that
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Why is it that Apple keeps their hardware closed from everyone then? Apple do use vendor lock in all the time: the iPod/iTunes is a prime example. They'd locked their customers in at every step of the way. You clearly are spo
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Oh, you mean like QuickTime and the
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
OS X has built in antivirus?
Yeah, it's called sensible user permissions. If you could run most apps in non admin and set up the file permissions properly, you'd eliminate a lot of viruses as a side effect. OSX does most of this by default.
Re:What problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
This assumes that if an OS like OSX was relevant, virus writers would write viruses for it that assumed admin/root permissions. Malware doesn't *need* root/admin permissions to carry our their primary tasks.
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
No, and biological disease doesn't need poor hygiene, sharing of used needles by intravenous drug users, or unprotected sex with multiple partners in order to propagate, either.
The reason default-admin access under Windows is the norm is not that it's irrelevant to security. The reason that other OS'es -- which don't provide admin access by default -- are more secure is not coincidence.
If Microsoft took steps to minimize ro
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Of course not. They are secure because nobody uses them.
"If Microsoft took steps to minimize routine use of admin access, it would take away a hugely useful tool for malware authors."
Vista will do this....and it won't stop malware. In fact, I doubt if it will even slow it down.
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
My 'dreamworld' doesn't involve least priviledge magically stopping ignorant users from introducing hostile code into their systems.
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Do firewalls and sprinkler systems stop innocent people from dying in fires?
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Re:What problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Profit? Larger companies and their licencing probably make a lot more money for them than the home licences do.
A lot of the home installations they have are probably due to preinstallation and bundling, where the user doesn't realize how much slower it's making their system, because they only have experience with it installed and running. So, why bother making it leaner? It's just going to cost more.
However, the corporate users generally have IT guys who have somew
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Not necessarily. After all, Trend Micro, which doesn't have much of a name among the home antivirus market has a fairly large presence on the corporate side.
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Re:What problem? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What problem? (Score:5, Informative)
We're still selling it at the shop that I work at. I'm not sure why... We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Last week whilst selecting a replacement anti-virus for our existing Symantec Corporate installation, I was lucky enough to receive a virus sample by e-mail (to an otherwise unfiltered mailbox). I received this virus at 18:05, Kaspersky first became awar
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
In addition NOD-32 is really quick, low on resources and has really good anti-spyware detection using the same technology.
I'm usually aware of it when I'm running anti-spyware software -- I don't need NOD-32 to tell me. ;)
-:sigma.SB
Re:What problem? (Score:5, Informative)
We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
AVG is an excellent product. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now with zero problems, minimal performance/CPU/RAM impact, etc. I am so impressed with it that I am actually going to pay for it, despite the free version working "good enough" for me.
At work, NAV sucks my computer dry. Sure, it works well enough, but the cure is worse than the disease. Too bad my employer is in bed with MS and Norton, no room for AVG...
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
If price is the pinch try Avast!
If you have $30AU ($18US) get trend pccillin oem bundle, can usually track em down fairly easy, it does use some resources (mainly ram) but actually gets most of the baddies.
Of course if you want good protection and low resources get kaspersky
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Virus Bulletin [virusbtn.com] (BugMeNot Required [bugmenot.com]) does tests of about 30 different antivirus programmes on various versions of windows from NT4 to Server 2003.
They set up computers with the various AV software, and infect the computers with currently common viruses and see which ones catch them. The resuls of 44 of these tests since 1998 for some of the major AV programmes are as follows;
Passed/Failed/NA
S
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
NOD32 (Score:3, Informative)
It also proactively stopped all the common WMF exploits.
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Seriously, are you advising your customers to run without any antivirus solution in place AT ALL? What is your advice to them on service packs and regular software updates, firewall, etc?
"Safe internet practices" involve all of the above. And that's just for starters.
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
You are correct, I should clarify
Yes, I do recommend other antivirus solutions, usually NOD32, but many users are reluctant to remove NAV. This is often because they do not like to feel that they have wasted their subscription fees.
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
I hope that is sarcasm...for me it is Spybot, Adaware, and if
that doesn't get it done then HijackThis! and a some kill process tools .
A little regedt32 and msconfig as well, and shutting off the damn system restore .
It is friggin amazing how much crap now hides itself in windows pre-fetch and system restore .
Ex-MislTech
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine.
And besides, what kind of antivirus system lets some random program delete it's files, causing it to stop protecting the user's machine?
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Two words ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
From TFA, it's apparently deleting registry entries, not the files. Another advantage of the monolithic Windows registry; anything can fuck up anything else.
Re:What problem? (Score:1, Troll)
It isn't "some random program", it is a Microsoft program, with free access to all the undocumented APIs in Windows - I'm sure that Microsoft left themselves loopholes all over the place. In fact I suspect that the majority of Windows security problems were deliberately put there to act as backdoor for Microsoft to do something like this.
Re:What problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree. I am a computer services provider for mostly home users and I often find NAV and internet tools to be single greatest contributor to draining system resources. I usually recommend disabling NAV, using safe internet practices, and scanning weekly or if there appears to be a problem.
Oh yeah, but I've yet to find any antivirus software which doesn't do this.
I have also found that attempting to educate users about safe Internet practices is futile at best. I do, quite literally, have my father as th
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
SB
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Did you forget? They were ordered to document all the undocumented APIs they'd been using, and they did just that [microsoft.com].
There are some really useful things in there. I don't know how I ever managed to write a decent Windows program before I had access to PathYetAnotherMakeUniqueName() [microsoft.com].
Re:What problem? (Score:2)
Agreed. At work, we switched to McAfee. It appears to be marginally better, but I have been toying with creating a support message to facetiously ask for a second laptop under the explanation that my primary laptop is already fully allocated to other "colleagues". The virus scanner, spyware scanners, system inventory scanner, software firewall, and mobile backup solution have conspired to use most of my system resources nearly 1
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
http://www.nod32.com/ [nod32.com] is what you're looking for.
Having had to use and support enough Microsoft crap over the years, I consider it to be suspicious that there's a "problem" appearing after Microsoft introduces a competing product.
Although I am sure that Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware uses less CPU and memory, what with all the undocumented Windows features which were mysteriously used in their software.
I was with you till you
Re:What problem? (Score:1)
Re:What problem? (Score:1)