Free avg vs Norton 360

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cl-scott

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Jul 5, 2012
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Just my opinion, but between the two I'd give the nod to AVG, though I generally lost respect for AVG around version 8 when feature creep became the name of the game. There comes a point in the life of every program where you, as a developer, have added more or less every legitimately useful feature there is to add. However, when you still need to convince people to upgrade to keep money coming in, that often leads to feature creep. Developers just throwing in all kinds of useless garbage that adds unnecessary bloat to the program.

Norton hit that phase several years before AVG, so that's why I give AVG the slight nod. That, and it's free, so it's not like you're paying to have a bunch of useless bloat dragging down your computer.
 
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hwangchan

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Given the 2 choices, I have seen more sucess with AVG than norton. But I have seen both fail to protect a computer. AVG has a nicely effective boot scan option, but it takes a long time to complete.
I think there are better free AV suites out there. A good comparison chart can be found at av-test.org
 
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Onus

Onus

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The last Norton release drastically improved the performance dragging. While I have used AVG, and would use it again, when I can get the whole Norton suite essentially free, as part of my Internet subscription (ISP=Comcast), that seems to make more sense. The only downside is having to first install a piece of interfering, roach-ridden poohware called "ConstantGuard" in order to install the Norton. Fortunately, it is possible to then remove the ConstantGuard.
 
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Brett928S2

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Hi :)

My shops fix viruses every day... a LOT of them with machines with AVG FREE on them :(

We use Norton Internet Security 2013... (my own machines as well as my shops).. that should tell you something...

If you wish to use one of the free ones.... we see LEAST viruses on machines with MSE ..

Not as good as NIS 2013 , but not bad...

IMHO...

All the best Brett :)
 
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Brett928S2

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Hi :)

I don't believe in AV benchies...

I believe in customers who come in my shops and say ....I have Viruses and **** (REPLACE the asterisks, with most of the free ones, particularly those beginning with the letter A)

All the best Brett :)
 
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unoriginal1

unoriginal1

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Nothing to back up my theory... But I'd assume that AVG is far more popular then MSE to the "average" user. (non techie etc..)

That being said, I'd also assume Brett see's more machines on "average" with AVG verses machines with Mse.

Basing my theory off of a google search for "free antivirus" First hit.. AVG.. Second Avast.

Could be way off lol but it makes sense to me :p.

@Brett. Would you say you see an equal number of infected machines with Avast installed as well?
 
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mactronix

mactronix

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Sep 17, 2006
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That would be my theory as well. Norton is better than it was but I would never install it on any PC I owned and would never install it on anyone else's.

IMHO

Mactronix :)
 
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Brett928S2

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Hi :)

The 3 "A`s as we call them (AVG, AVIRA, AVAST) we see lots of viruses...AVG definitely most then AVIRA/AVAST around equal...MSE we still see some but a lot rarer than the three A`s...

As a guess we probably see around 500 to 600 machines a year infected with Viruses (both Pc`s and Laptops) although the percentage of Laptops is increasing steadily over Towers..

All the best Brett :)


 
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cl-scott

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It's rather difficult to say since Brett's method is anything but scientific. It's a completely random sample, with absolutely no controls to ensure a certain uniformity of the data. It'd be like trying to predict the winner of the next British PM election by sampling a random group of people all around the world about who they would vote for, and not controlling for ability to vote in the election... On account of being a British citizen and all that.
 
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Brett928S2

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Hi :)

I see your point , but the way I see it, is that as it IS a TRUE LIFE RANDOM SAMPLE....i.e. 500 real life customers who have viruses, its a better sample than a few test machines in a lab.... and they don't do 500 tests...not ever lol...

The proof of this is in the following statement....

I would happily bet £1000 that out of the next 5 machines that come into one of my shops (with viruses) at least one will have AVG on it and at least 3 will have one of the 3 A`s on it...

I would happily continue that bet if I could find someone to take it, forever....as I could NOT possibly lose money, and I am not even a gambler by the way, but I do like to make money, and that would be the way to do it....

All the best Brett :)
 
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A

A Bad Day

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I'm a bit skeptical of MSE. It has Windows Defender built into it, and the stand-alone Windows Defender on my Win7 laptop is an absolute resource hog and takes forever to finish a scan.

Whenever WD starts its scan, it is impossible to play any movies without insane stuttering because of the hard drive's read performance being kneecapped by WD. CPU usage was low, but significantly higher than other AVs I've used.

It takes 3 hours to complete a scan compared to less than 30 minutes for AVG 2013 Free, and that's with AVG's resource usage set to low.

As a further annoyance, Windows Defender has to be manually started regardless of if it's on 7, Vista, or xp. Sometimes multiple times. I recall one time on my previous Win xp laptop, I opened up WD one day, and it stated that it had not performed a scan in 366 days. Aka, it failed to automatically start during that whole time.
 
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Guest

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I personally use MSE on all my computers (used AVG free in the past). But i don't rely solely on an Anti-Virus software when surfing the internet for protection. Use the software Sandboxie, it quarantines all you internet web browser usage in a sandbox. If you get infected, you can just delete the sandbox and the virus/malware/trojan goes away without affecting other parts of your computer. My web browser of choice would be Waterfox with no-script, ghostery, adblock, betterprivacy, flagfox, flashblock, https everywhere, request policy and WOT for the safest experience.

Here is the link for sandboxie for more information and download:
http://www.sandboxie.com/

For Waterfox- x64 version of firefox:
http://www.waterfoxproject.org/
 
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ish416

ish416

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I typically get in about 10 systems a week infected with various things. No AV will stop things 100% of the time.

Of the free AV's Microsoft Security Essentials is, I think, one of the best. AVG free is decent (but bloated) and Avira, Avast and Comodo are better than nothing but MSE seems in my opinion to be the better of them.

As for paid, Norton (360) was terrible a few years ago and has made signifigant improvements but I would never pay for it at this point.

The best paid AV I have came across would have to be Bit-defender followed by Kaspersky and Trend Micro.

Mcafee, Vipre, Webroot, and older versions of Norton are not as good as MSE in detection and removal all while having more of an impact on system performance than MSE.
 
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cl-scott

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Yes sorry, I've been bouncing between my duties on forums and a little side project I have going, and my previous post may have come across a bit terse. Looks like you took my meaning, but for others who may think I was attacking you in some way, that wasn't my intent.

However, ultimately this is kind of a case of correlation not being the same as causation. I know you're probably very equal opportunity in that you'll take anyone's money to clear up a virus mess, and I'd be the same way were our positions reversed. But we don't really know that it's some failing of the AV program at work here. No AV program is going to protect you from yourself. Which is to say that if I go and download something from a suspect site, disable the AV program because it keeps flagging it as suspect, then proceed to install it; it's rather difficult to then blame the AV program for the user getting some unwanted pest. There may be a large number of people using say AVG who come into your shop with a virus or malware issue, but we don't know enough to say it was a failure of the AV program.
 
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B

Brett928S2

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Hi :)

Actually I agree with your last point...

I don't think that AVG is any better (or worse) than Avira or Avast ... (none of them are great IMHO)

But as you point out its a matter of NUMBERS.... we see MORE people with AVG and viruses , because MORE people have AVG on their machines.... (laws of averages etc)

Having said that , I still see all 3 A`s on machines WITH viruses that those programs should fairly easily stop...

Norton and Mcfee manage to stop them.... etc...

All the best Brett :)

 
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