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2009 Anti-Virus Roundup

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Table of contents

1. One-Stop Comparison for 14 Anti-Virus Titles

We dissected and compared subscription and free anti-virus software for effectiveness, efficiency, and design.


It's time for Tom’s Guide to give you a complete guide to the best anti-virus offerings on the market, including commercial and freeware alternatives.

Anti-virus software has become a tool that you just can’t live without as it’s used everyday on every PC (or it should be). There are many kinds of software available, all of which different companies make with different price tags. Faced this wide range of possibilities, the non-professional user can often feel lost due to a lack of reliable information with which he or she can make intelligent purchasing decisions.

To help you out, we testes the latest versions of the 15 most used anti-virus offerings: Kaspersky, Panda, McAfee, Comodo, Norton, Trend Micro Pc-Cillin, Avira Antivir, Bit Defender, G-Data Total Care, Eset Smart Security, AVG, Clamwin, F-Secure, and Avast! Home Edition.

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shurcooL 05/21/2009 9:58 PM
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And here I thought AVG Free was the best free antivirus.

Doctor Rob 05/21/2009 10:30 PM
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Kaspersky internet security/ anti-virus does not look like that.. what the heck

Shadow703793 05/21/2009 10:46 PM
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spydeyrch 05/21/2009 10:56 PM
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What about Microsoft's own Oncecare

anonymous 05/21/2009 11:14 PM
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These guys sound like they don't know what they are talking about. They claimed that Avast skips text files even though "they are a classic refuge for malevolent programs." Text files cannot be executed and therefore cannot contain viruses. The pictures they have are different as well. In any case I am a happy user of Avast and prefer it to McAfee and Norton but have not tried the others.

anonymous 05/21/2009 11:35 PM
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the picture they use for Avast is with a different skin. You can switch the skin at anytime.
I m using avast home too. I think the scanning for HD is bit longer and taxing a lot on my P4 2.6. But its free..no complain...

romain_75 05/21/2009 11:37 PM
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IzzyCraft 05/21/2009 11:42 PM
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Spanish Kespersky = norman?

IzzyCraft 05/21/2009 11:43 PM
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French... T_T?? not english there we go

Ciuy 05/21/2009 11:57 PM
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anonymous 05/22/2009 1:37 AM
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what I used to like on Tom's site was the use of graphs... can't find any in this round up. More over how the can you judge resident scan performance just on start up time? What about disk R/W after all services have been initialized?
Anyway quite poor article

Twoboxer 05/22/2009 4:28 AM
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I use Norton NIS 2009, and have had problems that made me look for another. When I saw this article, I said "Great timing lol !"

Unfortunately, there is nothing in this article that inspires confidence in either the comparisons or the conclusions. There are comments about Norton that my personal experiences tell me are incorrect (at least in the US).

And, as said before, no tables, etc.

Very disappointing.

goose man 05/22/2009 6:05 AM
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@Shadow703793: NOD32 is in page 14
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/2009-a [...] 15-14.html

@romain_75: Kaspersky in page 15
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/2009-a [...] 15-15.html

@shurcooL: So do I, use AVG for last 3 years thinking it was best one.
May be good time for change ...

dandy 05/22/2009 6:17 AM
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lumpoco 05/22/2009 7:31 AM
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I'm very surprised to hear that Norton is not a resource hog. It is the reason I switched to free AV software like Avast and AVG. I'm not going back to Norton even if they paid me...OK I might consider it.

anonymous 05/22/2009 7:39 AM
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Why do you have pictures of Kaspersky on the page with AVG antivirus?

anonymous 05/22/2009 7:52 AM
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haha kapersky became norman.. avg became kepersky.. lol

falchard 05/22/2009 12:58 PM
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Was this review bought or something? For Norton to get such a good review I am leaning towards it being bought. I mean c'mon, Norton not being a resource hog and stealing your system. How do you expect us to believe that?

anonymous 05/22/2009 3:06 PM
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Why not review Kaspersky Internet Security, instead of just the Antivirus, when the Internet Security package for other brands were reviewed?

Also, The KAV Internest Securitiy is $54.99 at Walmart. The review stated it was double.

I seriously have my doubts and found myself shaking my head after reading the reviews for several of the products in here.

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