Which Anti-Virus takes little memory?? AVG 8 too large...

P

pattyjamas

I am running AVG 7.5 on 3 computers. This is a paid license. There is
only one process running if you shut off auto updates and kill
avgamsvr. And the main process AVGCC takes up a small 300k. I do not
think SVCHOST applies here.

I do not need all the bells and bloated whistles of Norton Suites,
ZoneAlarm or McAfee. Have tried them all before and am content with a
decent AV product without anything else. If it comes with a spyware
component I will take it but I have used the combo of AdAware, Spybot,
and Spywareblaster. MBAM is great if you do get infected, but I rarely
get a virus or spyware and am the sole user of my machines. Lucky I
suppose.

In looking at the web site av-test.org I see that Avira ranks pretty
highly in terms of %'s. AV was fairly low which surprised me.


I did try AVG 8 (licensed) and it takes (like others have said) way
too many resources and I uninstalled it. This was the paid version. I
have read a few peoples comments about the 8.x free version (virus and
spyware only) and not too many were glowing.

In summary,

What I am looking for is a fairly high ranking AV product that has a
small footprint in terms of memory use and will not cause much
sluggishness on my systems (P4 3.4, E6600 Core 2 Duo, Dell XPS laptop
2.4ghz--all have 3gb of memory, 2 are XP, 1 Vista)

Not sure how much memory Avira or AVK or F-Secure use and how many
tasks they spawn, but they ranked highly.

Thanks
Patty
 
E

Erik Vastmasd

What I am looking for is a fairly high ranking AV product that has a
small footprint in terms of memory use and will not cause much
sluggishness on my systems (P4 3.4, E6600 Core 2 Duo, Dell XPS laptop
2.4ghz--all have 3gb of memory, 2 are XP, 1 Vista)
Click to expand...

I have used NOD32 from ESET for a number of years.
There is no free version though.
It has a small footprint and isn't sluggish on my systems.
 
P

pattyjamas

(e-mail address removed) wrote, on 22/10/2008 3:21 am:


I have used Kaspersky Anti Virus for about 3 years.  It is not memory-
or cpu-hungry.  It is not a free product (although you can try it out
for free for a month), but it is well worth it, in my experience. There
is an especially helpful user forum where problems are very quickly
sorted and this, in itself, is a big "plus".
Click to expand...

Quilljar,
How much memory are you seeing Avira take up in task manager and how
many tasks?

THanks
Patty
 
P

pattyjamas

Your PCs seems to be powerful enough and have enough ram that Avira
shouldn't slow it down at all.
I use the free version on my Win2000Pro and I am running only 1GB of ram
with an AMD 2100XP cpu (1.8GHz).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Can someone go into task manager and tell me how much mem usage their
AV (trying to take a poll) programs are consuming?

Thanks
Patty
 
C

Colon Terminus

Your PCs seems to be powerful enough and have enough ram that Avira
shouldn't slow it down at all.
I use the free version on my Win2000Pro and I am running only 1GB of ram
with an AMD 2100XP cpu (1.8GHz).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Can someone go into task manager and tell me how much mem usage their
AV (trying to take a poll) programs are consuming?

Thanks
Patty


I'm running Avast! free eidition.
Task Manager shows the following:
Avast! service GUI component - 908 KB
Avast! e-Mail Scaner Service - 2,368 KB
Avast! antivirus service - 10,000 KB
Avast! Web Scanner - 1,124 KB
Avast! Antivirus updating service - 208 KB

All together, about a 15 MB footprint.
CPU usage at idle flip-flops between 0-1%
 
P

pattyjamas

My wife and I both like the free home version of Avast on our respective PC's. (Dell 531 and Dell 531S) I have no idea about memory usage. Both of our PC's run smoothly with no apparent slowdown due to Avast.
With rare exception I think nowadays the entire AV "resource usage" thingis a non-issue. Even the least expensive PC's have ample CPU and ram to handle them. Moreover the concept of "slow down" and / or "resource hog" is atotally subjective thing. Most users how so many unnecessary (IMHO) background apps running anyway I doubt that a universal and factual AV analysis could be derived.

--

Little Charliehttp://www.soundclick.com/LittleCharlie
"Destroy your EGO and your ART will flourish"- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

Thanks Dave and Colon.
I sometimes help friends with their computers and have seen Norton and
McAfee slow peoples computers to a crawl even with a good deal of
memory. They just try to do too much and be the one stop shop for
things a lot of people do not need.
I do not need web site, link scanning or email scanning, and do not
need a password manager, just AV.

My AVG (300k memory usage) is soon going to be replaced with Avast or
Avira as AVG 7.5 will not be supported past 12/31/08. My paid version
expires actually on the 24th. 8.0 is a hog and also not rated as
highly in finding viruses as others I read.

This article below helped as well:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=210756


Thanks
Patty
 
G

Gaz

I am running AVG 7.5 on 3 computers. This is a paid license. There is
only one process running if you shut off auto updates and kill
avgamsvr. And the main process AVGCC takes up a small 300k. I do not
think SVCHOST applies here.

I do not need all the bells and bloated whistles of Norton Suites,
ZoneAlarm or McAfee. Have tried them all before and am content with a
decent AV product without anything else. If it comes with a spyware
component I will take it but I have used the combo of AdAware, Spybot,
and Spywareblaster. MBAM is great if you do get infected, but I rarely
get a virus or spyware and am the sole user of my machines. Lucky I
suppose.

In looking at the web site av-test.org I see that Avira ranks pretty
highly in terms of %'s. AV was fairly low which surprised me.


I did try AVG 8 (licensed) and it takes (like others have said) way
too many resources and I uninstalled it. This was the paid version. I
have read a few peoples comments about the 8.x free version (virus and
spyware only) and not too many were glowing.

In summary,

What I am looking for is a fairly high ranking AV product that has a
small footprint in terms of memory use and will not cause much
sluggishness on my systems (P4 3.4, E6600 Core 2 Duo, Dell XPS laptop
2.4ghz--all have 3gb of memory, 2 are XP, 1 Vista)

Not sure how much memory Avira or AVK or F-Secure use and how many
tasks they spawn, but they ranked highly.

Thanks
Patty
Click to expand...

Avira is very light on resources, but comes with two drawbacks, one,
scheduled file scanning is disabled by default, and secondly an intrusive
pop up is displayed on every update. However, i assume the paid for version
(and you are interested in paid for) doesnt have the popup.

Gaz
 
G

Gaz

Little said:
My wife and I both like the free home version of Avast on our
respective PC's. (Dell 531 and Dell 531S) I have no idea about memory
usage. Both of our PC's run smoothly with no apparent slowdown due to
Avast.
With rare exception I think nowadays the entire AV "resource usage"
thing is a non-issue. Even the least expensive PC's have ample cpu
and ram to handle them. Moreover the concept of "slow down" and / or
"resource hog" is a totally subjective thing. Most users how so many
unnecessary (IMHO) background apps running anyway I doubt that a
universal and factual AV analysis could be derived.
Click to expand...

I most strongly disagree with you on this issue. An xp machine with less
then 1gb, and vista with less then 1.5gb will quickly slow down with the
installation of mcaffe suite, norton suite, avg suite, panda, bulldog.

It is a very very regular configuration for lower end machines both laptop
and desktop to come with 1gb of memory and use shared video graphics of
128mb+ for Vista.. In such a scenario, any of the installations above will
cripple the machine.

Gaz
 
K

Kerry Brown

Little Charlie said:
Thanks for that great link. This is (I am still reading it) the type of
comparative AV performance data I have hoped would have been available all
along. Great reading...at first glance it seems like Norton 2009 is a vast
improvement over Norton's prior offerings. Thanks again!
Click to expand...


When I posted the link I hadn't read it right to the end. The study was paid
for by Symantec. It does correlate with my own anecdotal evidence but it
does make you wonder about the objectivity of the study.
 
B

Bill

NOD32 uses less resources than any product on the market. In addition,
it has a high detection rate. It's not free, but it's worth every
penny.
 
L

Little Charlie

Bill said:
NOD32 uses less resources than any product on the market. In addition,
it has a high detection rate. It's not free, but it's worth every
penny.
Click to expand...

No it does not....

Test results from Sept 2008

http://www.passmark.com/ftp/antivirus_09-performance-testing-ed1.pdf

In many instances the totally free Avast outscores nod 32

Better get up to speed Mr. Blevins. The tired old Norton-bashing mantra is outdated, untrue, and makes you a liar. NAV 2009 is a superb product.....as is NIS 2009 read...read...read
 

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