This product has no cleaning capabilities. Of what use is it? Even if
it does find malware you would still have to use another product to
clean your infected system, right? That would seem to be a good reason
to use something that can do both.
badgolferman said:(e-mail address removed), 4/1/2006, 10:03:58 AM,
If you are looking for effectiveness in catching malware then all
testing I have seen indicates AntiVir to be superior to the other two.
If you are interested in eye candy then Avast! gives you the most
choices.
Despite everyone's besmirching of Symantec, they fare comparably to the
popular AV applications available.
I would study this chart for a better understanding of what their
strengths and weaknesses are. Although these are the pay versions of
the products, I would guess the virus definitions are the same for the
free versions.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/ergebnisse_2006_02.php
Art said:Clamwin isn't a mainstream av.
- It's just a Windows port of clamav
- was designed for email servers.
- has a small fraction of the detection capabilities and features of mainstream
antivirus products.
I'd agree w/Art on this. Clamwin ain't quite mainstream. But the rest...
I don't know why "just a port" and "was designed for email servers"
would make ClamWin the lessor of candidates. Wrt "small fraction..." I
don't know what that means either:
Art said:It means many things. A scanner for email servers has to handle a
fraction of the things "real" av scanners handle ... such as
polymorphic viruses. A simple sig scanner like clamav went the way of
the dodo bird many years ago. Also, it's now just up to something over
40,000 sigs but "real" av are now at about the 200,000 mark and they
have heuristic detection as well. Clamav is way down at the bottom of
av comparative tests that use large numbers of malware samples.
Thanks for the clarification Art. Btw, I'd like to follow av comparison
tests that include ClamAV but I haven't found any. Do you have a spare
url lying around?
Art said:Put 'clamav test comparative' into Google. There's a 2005 test result
right at the top ... done at Uni Magdeburg. It's difficult to follow,
but the data is there.
Art
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
Yup. Discouraging. But time will tell.what a grim review. Misses itw viruses, all boot viruses, worms,
macros, etc etc etc.
NT
Thanks to all who have posted (so far), esp for the links.
Trend's definition file is now over 8meg! While I do have DSL that
seems a bit much. Also, The Trend update id not automatic.
Anyone looking for a free on-demand av scanner that's worth
having should check out Bit Defender:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/BitDefender-
Free-Edition.shtml
The free escan utility using the Kaspersky scan engine is also
very much worth having and using:
http://www.mwti.net/products/mwav/mwav.asp
Put 'clamav test comparative' into Google. There's a 2005 test
result right at the top ... done at Uni Magdeburg. It's
difficult to follow, but the data is there.
A few months ago tried the Bitdefender scanner but didn't like the
way it seems to need a couple of XP services running. ISTR one
was to communicate with their own server.
As I liked having the exta scanner from Bitdefender I got used to
disabling and enabling these two services. However I think the
freebie is time-limited because ISTR that after a while I could
not get it to work any longer. So I uninstalled it.
Do you mean that the current version of the freeware "MicroWorld
AntiVirus Toolkit Utility (MWAV)" uses the Kaspersky engine?
If that is an up-to-date engine and if it uses an up-to-date set
of virus definitions, then that would most certainly be worth
having.
Can you confirm this?
Maybe you had a trial and not the free version. I've never had
any problems with the free version. It's strictly on-demand, as
I said. There's no realtime scanner module.
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