ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.2.67

As far as reputations go, ESET’s NOD32 is practically unimpeachable. Version 4 of the popular and effective antivirus and antispyware builds on that rep, emphasizing its community-sourced ThreatSense for preventing attacks before they occur, a slick interface, and some of the highest independently-tested detection rates married to low rates of false positives.

Installation is clean and straightforward. Greatly improved from its humble beginnings as separate scanners that once littered the desktop, NOD32 can be toggled between standard features and more advanced options. Scans were neither blazingly fast nor excruciatingly slow, but the real-time defenses produced no noticeable drags on system performance. NOD32 has consistently scored near the top of several independent antivirus testing organization ratings for finding the most malware. An uninstallation option is available, requiring a reboot. However, we found residual system files and Registry settings that had to be deleted by hand.

If you’re confident in your clicking habits, you might not necessarily miss the firewall and spam filter that ESET built into its Smart Security suite that’s based on NOD32. Even without them, though, NOD32′s speed, accuracy, and lack of impact on resources make it a must. Download

 

Norton AntiVirus 2011

Features and support 

There aren’t many new features in Norton AntiVirus 2011, or even new major features. What’s changed is in how Norton presents its features–across the board the program is easier to navigate–and how the features operate.

The reputation-based security checks where your programs were installed from and when they were installed, and compares that data against the 58 million users participating in the crowd-sourced Norton Community Watch to see if any of your programs should be red-flagged. Norton’s System Insight component has been bumped up to version 2.0, which is the proprietary internal network that warns you when your programs unnecessarily hog system resources. This gives some extra heft to the system performance map, where you can click on any spike and see what caused it.

The second iteration of Download Insight applies the same reputation-based logic to new downloads, and the third version of Norton SONAR (Symantec Online Network for Automatic Response) looks for suspicious software behavior and automatically chooses protective actions. You can toggle how aggressive SONAR is in the Settings window. Download

 

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2011

AVG Free has some new protective features this year, too. The software offers what it calls “smart scanning,” which leverages AVG’s behavioral detection network to scan known safe files once, and only rescan them if it detects changes. As with its competitors, AVG’s network is made up of its user base anonymously contributing data up to the cloud. You can choose to opt out of contributing your data when you install, or from the options menu. AVG says opting out won’t negatively affect your security.

The never-ending mantra chanted by security suite vendors sounds a lot like “faster scans, easier to use, better performance,” and AVG has released a new version of AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011 that it says accomplishes all three. Certainly, the scans are faster, it does install more quickly, and some tweaks to the interface have made it easier to use.The smart scanning tech also gives you a built-in system resource manager that prioritizes scans. If a scan is scheduled to begin while the computer is in use, it will automatically restrict the scan so that it runs slower but doesn’t interfere with the computer’s other tasks. When it detects the computer idling, it will then allocate more power to the scan. The feature comes with a slider so you can customize how sensitive it is.

Another big improvement has been to AVG LinkScanner. LinkScanner, which comes with AVG Free but is also available as a separate download, now scans links posted on Facebook and MySpace. It adds a green check next to safe links, a red X next to unsafe ones, and adds a notice below the link stating that it’s been evaluated by AVG.

Concurrent with this new release, AVG has opened a new Web site called Threat Labs. The site is designed as a click-through landing page for people who want to learn more about the LinkScanner’s ratings, but it’s also available directly so that non-LinkScanner users can evaluate links on the fly.

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