Accelerator X, I've been looking for info on Sophos and wondering why I've heard decent things about it in the past but can't find a recent review of it. Thanks for those timely posts.
I've stuck with AVG Free + Ad-Aware + Spybot for a while, b/c 1) they're all free, 2) AVG scans quickly and is resource-light, and 3) AAW & Spybot detect some tracking cookies every time, so it seems like they're doing their job. But a recent problem with svchost rendering a system unresponsive (turned out to be a problem with Window's Auto Updater) ratcheted up my paranoia levels, so I started to look for paid A/V + A/S. Staples had Webroot's Spy Sweeper + A/V for 3 PCs package for free after rebate, so I picked it up with the intention of installing it in a few home PCs. Before I opened it, though, I installed their demo.
How the f-ing h can this program take four and a half hours to scan a 16GB root drive. Seriously, FOUR POINT FIVE HOURS. Sure, it's not slowing my system down much while it scans (even though the slider is set to maximize speed and CPU/RAM usage), but AVG took all of 40 minutes to scan my whole HD, 145GB. Heck, even throw in separate scans with AAW and Spybot and I'm probably still close to an hour total for three separate trawls through my HD.
I guess I should try Webroot without the A/V part to see how it fares, and revert to AVG. I tried Avast's freeware A/V, but it seemed much slower and less intuitive than AVG. I'll give NOD32 a try (well-reviewed and relatively cheap [$40] two-year renewals, though I see from chav's experience that perfection remains elusive). I think I've tried it before--I've definitely tried Kaspersky--but I don't remember my impression of it. Probably since they found no virii and hadn't incorporated spyware scanning back then, I reverted to AVG rather than paying to find nothing (great logic
). I also bought PC-cillin a year or two ago--it was decently fast with an unintuitive interface--but I never renewed. I used McAfee and mostly Norton in the Win9x days, but it's been a while, and I've stayed away with the bad reviews of a few years ago.
Or I could relax and stick with my current setup, which is quite close to Frank's (I've got a NAT router, too, and stick with Firefox for the most part) and hasn't netted me an infection yet (according to AVG and the various free online scans [Kaspersky, Housecall, Sophos, etc.] I do occasionally, knock on wood).
I used to have Windows Defender, too, b/c I figured it couldn't hurt, but it never caught anything, slowed me down with its occasional scans, and doesn't seem to be well-reviewed, so I ditched it.
I've stuck with AVG Free + Ad-Aware + Spybot for a while, b/c 1) they're all free, 2) AVG scans quickly and is resource-light, and 3) AAW & Spybot detect some tracking cookies every time, so it seems like they're doing their job. But a recent problem with svchost rendering a system unresponsive (turned out to be a problem with Window's Auto Updater) ratcheted up my paranoia levels, so I started to look for paid A/V + A/S. Staples had Webroot's Spy Sweeper + A/V for 3 PCs package for free after rebate, so I picked it up with the intention of installing it in a few home PCs. Before I opened it, though, I installed their demo.
How the f-ing h can this program take four and a half hours to scan a 16GB root drive. Seriously, FOUR POINT FIVE HOURS. Sure, it's not slowing my system down much while it scans (even though the slider is set to maximize speed and CPU/RAM usage), but AVG took all of 40 minutes to scan my whole HD, 145GB. Heck, even throw in separate scans with AAW and Spybot and I'm probably still close to an hour total for three separate trawls through my HD.
I guess I should try Webroot without the A/V part to see how it fares, and revert to AVG. I tried Avast's freeware A/V, but it seemed much slower and less intuitive than AVG. I'll give NOD32 a try (well-reviewed and relatively cheap [$40] two-year renewals, though I see from chav's experience that perfection remains elusive). I think I've tried it before--I've definitely tried Kaspersky--but I don't remember my impression of it. Probably since they found no virii and hadn't incorporated spyware scanning back then, I reverted to AVG rather than paying to find nothing (great logic
). I also bought PC-cillin a year or two ago--it was decently fast with an unintuitive interface--but I never renewed. I used McAfee and mostly Norton in the Win9x days, but it's been a while, and I've stayed away with the bad reviews of a few years ago.Or I could relax and stick with my current setup, which is quite close to Frank's (I've got a NAT router, too, and stick with Firefox for the most part) and hasn't netted me an infection yet (according to AVG and the various free online scans [Kaspersky, Housecall, Sophos, etc.] I do occasionally, knock on wood).
I used to have Windows Defender, too, b/c I figured it couldn't hurt, but it never caught anything, slowed me down with its occasional scans, and doesn't seem to be well-reviewed, so I ditched it.
At any rate, everything on their website seems expensive. 
