On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 23:31 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
Back a few years McAfee was my preferred AV application. One of several reasons for this was being able to update the signature files from an FTP server or file share automatically which was great for supporting a network of installations. At the time Norton needed an expensive server application to do the same thing. In fact when IBM sold its AV technology to Symantec and the company I worked for (an ex IBM location) had to move across to Norton I had the opportunity to migrate with them for free (I had been using IBM AV for free until then).
For managed installations and general niceness of the desktop client I like Trend.
The management stuff is essentially free as once you are buying more than 5 desktop licences it is cheaper to buy the officescan product for 5 users.
When we were using it in a games Development studio we found mcafee hogged a lot of system resources and seemed to cause random crashes. Moving to the trend client (that seems very lightweight in comparison) gave a noticeable speed boost to many of the machines without sacrificing anything in the detection ability department.
For personal machines I quite like AVG, it's interface is a little clunky but it gets the job done and I have seen it detect viruses on machines that have been given a clean bill of health by Norton etc... I also appreciate the fact that (with a little tinkering) it is possible to get AVG to run from a keydrive which is handy for machines that come in to the workshop.
Norton....Norton I consider worse than some of the viruses out there :o) Their registration/renewal process is the most confusing web experience I think I have ever seen. I actually get clients (intelligent ones) call me up to come round and complete the renewal process for them, there are just so many steps to it. As for their Internet security product that comes bundled with the most brain dead firewall ever created......