Webroot or Eset

I want to know which is the better Security solution. My Mcaffe AV subscription just ended and I was not really a big fan.

Also if there are any other recommendations I would gladly look into them.

 

First I would go to the Mcaffe site and get there uninstall tool. You will not be able to remove all of there software with a regular Windows uninstall. This is true of quite a few of the paid anti virus programs. I am not a big fan of paid anti virus. but you can do better than Mcaffe. Some people consider it a virus or worst. I would read up on other antivirus software before installing either of the ones you mentioned.

 

Eset Smart Security is the best man. I have been using it for years and never got a virus. And best of all, never felt a slight slowdown in my system. It's like you don't have an Antivirus / firewall installed. It is very light on the system, and yet, much more secure than McAfee

I can't imagine how you were even using McAfee man. Uninstall it, install the Eset Smart Security Demo which is just like a full version but for 30 days, and see the difference yourself rather than listening to me or anyone else here.

Best Free Antivirus Software Trial: Free Home, Business and Gaming Download from ESET

 

As soon as you uinstall McAfee you will feel that you bought a new and faster PC! Not only that, but McAfee's products are the worst for detecting and removing viruses. Big name, crappy product

 

I just did a secure erase so I know it is gone off my SSD. I always noticed that Mcafee slowed my system load times after I uninstalled and did a Secure erase my system boots insanely fast.

Sweet I will check it out.

I totally agree on that point Mcafee sucked bad.

 

Good luck let me know what you think of Eset Smart Security!

I just let its firewall on autopilot, and I never get bothered again

PS: I always buy 2 year licenses as they tend to give you a bigger discount when you go for 2 years in a row.

I got my 2 year license for 2 users (basically it's 1 key, valid to be installed on 2 computers) for 81 USD!

 

I am running a deep scan at the moment and I gotta say the fact that it can scan memory and is only using 14-18% CPU compared to Mcrappy which used to peg my 720 @ 40-60% for a scan it is rather impressive. I even set it up for my gaming using the PC gamer setup guide they listed. So far this one is seeming like a winner. Will see how it does in the next few weeks Gonna try downloading a couple of viruses to see if it catches them that I know Mcrappy used to miss.

Also after this trial I may give webroot a shot.

 

Eset by a long shot.

McAfee is by far the worst possible thing you could have received onto your system.

Furthermore, if you want to go completely free and still retain high level of protection, pick Avast free, or MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) for active AV protection, and get Malwarebytes (free) for on-demand scans (most of the time mine just sits there, but I keep it 'just in case' - even though I hadn't really used it in quite a while - seeing how there was no need).

 

So which do you use MSE or Avast? Do they detect really well? I always thought the free AV's like AVG were garbage. I never tried MSE or Avast and I am gonna look into these thanks for the recommendation.

 

For security suite detection results, check ' AV-Comparatives'; Comparatives / Reviews ; Whole Product Dynamic Test and then select for instance January-June 2011. link
Also, Symantec NIS is a very decent suite with excellent detection.
It's not very tweakable though, if it deems something malware it will remove it, no matter what, even if you want to download/keep a certain file.

For free programs, check my sig and make your own choice.
As for AV's, I'd recommend either MSE or Avast. Another recommendation is Sandboxie for internet facing apps.
It requires a little bit of learning to set it up but even the free version can offer great protection against 0-day malware.

 

Lots of great information you have given me here. I am going to look it over + rep to you ASAP.

 

You simply cannot compare the Free MSE to Eset Smart Security.

Eset's scanning engine and security is much higher and faster as well.

MSE as a free alternative is good. But I would never risk even 1% on my systems security to save a few bucks.

At the end of the day. Eset's people's sole work is to release security solutions, and they're darn good at it while keeping your system super light

just try to scan with MSE and see how long it takes. Try to update it, and see how your system will choke to death. LOL I have tried both no thank you

 

Avira personal edition is the lightest of all the free AV's.

I wouldn't pay for a security solution, this is like throwing your money down the drain.

 

Throwing money in a water drain? LOL

This is like telling the hackers I am so cheap and don't mind having a vulnerable system and an antivirus solution that will slow down my PC and not allow me to enjoy its full potential coz I don't want to spend a few bucks per year

 

Free programs are just as good as pay programs. I would not rely on MSE and I would not rely on ESET either.

 

Alright guys was not trying to start a flame war between paid vs free here. I am going to check out all possible options free and paid. I am liking ESET so far not a resource hog and scanned my C(256gb) and D (500gb)drive in 32 minutes. This is amazing compared to Mcafee which is what I was using previously and I am sure even the free ones are better than it was. I appreciate all of your guys responses and I am looking into all of them.

 

Glad that it's working out for you.

 

Does your Alienware machine feel snappier now ?

 

Yes, it does but I think it was from the Secure erase I did. I definitely see the difference in performance using ESET vs Mcafee. So That is a big +, Still got some more testing to do to see how it is. I am still going to check out webroot + a combination of the free ones to see how they perform as well. Glad I made this thread cuz if not I might have just renewed my Mcafee!

 

Renewed McAfee

whoaa man, you were about to doom your Notebook for another year or two

What I have on my system is:

- Eset Smart Security v4 64-Bit (v5 RC still has some bugs, stay away until it's Official)

- SuperAntiSpyware Pro v5 (using it as a second wall of defense)

- Disabled Windows Defender from startup, and the service (POS program that never catches anything)

This way, my notebook performs better than any of my friends' desktops even

 

Hackers care only about your intelligence, not money. I am wise enough to go without a paid security software.

 

Good for you

kthxbye

 

The only paid program I use is one that I got for free. If I weren't using it I'd find a free alternative.

And based on your setup Raptor I would not be surprised if I could find something that would infect your computer. It's good enough and fairly light but it's definitely not invincible.

 

Tell me, what could infect my computer?

Running Windows 7 Pro (x64) with all Windows updates + Eset Smart Security FTW + SuperAntiSpyware Pro 5

Nothing can touch my system

 

I'm not super familiar with ESET so I'm not sure how its heuristics are. But antiviruses rely on blacklists and heuristics (Typically) and blacklists aren't all that helpful against 0days, which make up most of the malware that infects systems. That leaves heuristics, which usually does not provide a hell of a lot of protection.

ESET may have other modules I don't know about.

But, to answer your question, 0-day exploits and 0-day malware.

 

What are those?

 

A 0-day exploit is an exploit in a program (such as your web browser, pdf viewer, plugin, operating system, etc) that is unknown to the program/ new.

A 0-day malware is a new malware/ an old malware that's been updated.

Antiviruses that rely on blacklists can only block malware they know. If the malware is new... they don't know to block it. Most antiviruses if not all have what's known as heuristics, which is when they emulate the suspicious file/program and then see if it does anything that's typical of malware. This leads to lots of false positives and not an amazing detection rate... as detection rate goes up the false positive rate typically goes up as well.

 

So if there are more false positives that means not optimal protection?

 

False positives are annoying. If you're trying to install valid software and it's being blocked by your AV it's a pain.

It also leads to people not taking their product seriously and letting everything through it when it's blocked.

The idea is to get the best security with the least user interaction.

 

Eset's NOD32 has been known to gain the Virus Bulletin Awards for 0 infiltrations or any viruses in the wild get through it. Furthermore, even if a new virus comes out, Eset's heuristics will not allow it to harm your system even if it wasn't in the definitions.

I have never had a virus in 6 years. That tells me something

 

Speaking of False Positives. Eset's NOD32 / Smart Security have never EVER given me a false positive.

When I scanned my system once with Avira's Antivir and MSE, they found many stuff that are not viruses and declared them as a virus. They bugged the heck out of me.

Ill never use MSE even if you pay me. Seriously

 

You don't have to. You can be safe with ESET. But not perfectly safe and really not even incredibly safe.

Obviously ESET is not perfect and I've seen videos online where it's been bypasses.

‪Eset Smart Security 4.2 review and prevention test‬‏ - YouTube

I believe that will show you an infection with ESET running. Only 1/15 were able to bypass ESET, which is very impressive. But consider that there are thousands of new malware every day. Malware numbers have doubled in the last year and 0days are always going to manage to bypass antiviruses because heuristics just isn't good enough.

Will you be safe with ESET? Sure.

And FYI I went a month with 0 protection on my PC and didn't get any malware. It doesn't mean anything. I would not say that "Windows without any security software/ measures is secure" based on NOT being infected.

 

Since I have 2 laptops in the household and 1 desktop... mine is equipped with Avast, and the other two with MSE (I shift back and forth between the two occasionally on my laptop though, but I have to say that when Avast gave me some issues - such as when the company messed up their definition updates once, MSE never did).

 

MSE's got an incredibly low false detection rate and it's very light but it also doesn't have a ton of settings/ features. It's blacklist and heuristics and that's it. That means that about 60% of the malware that tries to install on a system with only MSE (0day malware) will get through.

 

MSE's light? That ends the discussion for me here.

Enjoy your light MSE I'm out

 

If you don't want to discuss anything that's fine... but in my experience MSE was fairly light and used only 60MB of RAM and moderate disk IO for an antivirus.

Of course I don't consider MSE or ESET light compared to my setup.

 

With the amount of memory the average user has now , memory consumption of an AV does not matter. Its how the scanning engine runs buddy

 

RAM isn't necessarily an issue. But modern hardware is not an excuse for excessive memory usage either. Not that ESET's memory usage is excessive, I've never used it so I wouldn't know.

But any antivirus is going to have to scan files and that uses CPU time and disk IO. For how inneficient antiviruses are the do use quite a lot of resources.

 

ESET is actually light when it comes to memory usage.

 

I repeat, memory consuption has nothing to do with system responsiveness like it did in the past days where users had 256 MB of RAM and every MB counted.

Most users nowadays have at least 2 GB of RAM and whatever an AV uses as memory to run means nothing! It is how the live scanning engine is working, how much CPU power it requires to scan a file, and how intelligent it is in the scan. This is where Eset's products have been known not only now. But since years, ever since they had v2 which is when I started using it.

Back in the days, where I was a heavy gamer, I asked around and all the gamers recommended NOD32 as it is the lightest yet very secure. I read reviews, saw the Virus Bulleting results, and have been using it since then.

I don't even have a single game installed now, but still, I want my system as snappy as possible:

But here is a screen shot just for your curiosity

 

I am surprised that you of all people, Raptor88, are saying that RAM usage/ slight differences in resource usage does not matter. After all I see you trying to tweak your computer in every tiny little way quite often.

I personally do not like committing any resources to security; RAM, Disk IO, CPU, anything.

Would you mind expanding your Process Explorer so that it includes IO?

 

Dear Hungry Man,

You are right, and you know me probably more than anyone here judging from my previous threads trying to squeeze every bit of performance. That's why I have 8 GB of RAM and PerfectCache to make proper usage of that RAM. But I do not compromise on any functionality or feature. Plus, thanks to PerfectCache, even if Load so many items on startup, my system is still snappy as anything

I disable startup items like:






My full running process list is as follows, I hid my username for security reasons as marked in the white squares:


















Disabled Services:

• 
  [*]Program Compatibility Assistant
  [*]Machine Debug Manager (MDM) [This causes major slow down on any system and is only required for programmers, usually gets installed with Office 2007]
  [*]Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
  [*]Remote Registry
  [*]Windows Time
  [*]Tablet PC
  [*]Windows Defender
  [*]Windows Error Reporting

 

I meant that you should go to your task manager -> view and change it to show Disk IO.

 

Oh ok, Ill upload soon kinda busy right now

 

Here you go, as you see, even with all the stuff that are loaded, including PerfectCache, Eset Smart Security, SuperAntiSpyware Real Time Monitoring, Internet Download Manager, etc, I still have 4 GB of RAM left to play with. Not that I will need most of it since everything is preloaded thanks to PerfectCache

 

You'd be surprised on how much more lenient MSE is with keygenerators and cracks.
That's something I like about it.
I'd rather that MSE, Avast or Avira looks for an actual infectious program and not attack the keygen or crack simply because of what they do.

 

Thanks Raptor.

 

My pleasure, but I was waiting for your comment?

 

I don't have my windows machine to compare to right now, unfortunately. I will on Tuesday.

It looks fairly typical for an AV in terms of resource usage. I'm just curious to see how your IO compares to my own.

 

Alright then, awaiting your results later on