Antivirus

[klf]

What is a good antivirus to use. I have used Norton's in the past. I have heard that starting with the 2004 edition, product activation is required. I don't have a problem with this except that I have heard that they are having problems with their activation process that can cause your system to be unprotected. I have used McAfee at work, but it eats up alot of my resources. As you know, I need antivirus protection, but I don't want to use something that will affect the performance FS 2004 or 2002.
Any suggestion or expreiences.
Thanks
en

[draky]

Norton or McAfee. I use McAfee online virus protection and scanning - these days it even automatically updates the necessary virus string files all on it's lonesome. Has saved me many of those lovely mails folk send with viruses too. Never had a problem (where's that wood?)so this would get my vote.

Dave

[klf]

Dave,
Thanks for your response. I have found out that I can simply renew my subscription for Norton Antivirus 2003 over the internet. I have used this for the last year without any problems. That may be the way to go since NAV 2004 seems to slow systems down. As I stated earlier, I want a good product that will not eat up resources.
Thanks,
ken

[gdavis101]

I like AVG 6.0 from Grisoft, its totally free and doesn't cost a dime too update. It has actually caught some things, that Mcfee didn't.

[BickBz]

>I like AVG 6.0 from Grisoft, its totally free and doesn't
>cost a dime too update. It has actually caught some things,
>that Mcfee didn't.


Me too! I've been using it for years - FREE - and it automatically
updates to the latest database - what more can you ask for.


MickB
HAND

[W2DR]

Ken -

Yes, I'd stay with the 2003 version. I've tried the 2004 Norton AV and it does slow things down a bit. Going back to the 2003 version solved all the problem here. (And, according to Symantec, there is no difference in the virus checker bewteen the two)

Doug

[TheFlightMan]

Ken,

Both products are good and Norton just put out a patch to resolve their product activation issue. When comparing McAfee 8.0 to Norton 2004, McAfee comes out on top since it uses less system resources. You can read several reviews about this, I did the research just a couple of months ago before buying McAfee 8.0. The major difference between Norton 2003 and 2004 is that 2004 checks for spyware and I believe spam.

I used to use McAfee with my previous employer and can tell you that their corporate version hogs more resources than the one you purchase for home. You have two options for the house, you can either purchase the 8.0 or get the online one as mentioned before in this post.

Yes, there are other choices out there that might work just as good and maybe not even cost a penny. However, the two leading companies in the market are McAfee and Norton. If you are happy with Norton 2003 then just buy the subscription, it will be the cheapest way to keep your antivirus solution up to date.

TheFlightMan

[klf]

Thanks for all of the responses. I think for right now, I will just renew the subscription for NAV 2003. I will check out the free version mentioned earlier. I guess I can uninstall NAV 2003 even though it has expired and reinstall it and update the subscription.
Thanks again.
Ken

[Richard_UK]

Personally, I have always used Norton but why do you need to run an anti-virus program at all when playing FS2004 or any other game? I can understand why you would run a firewall but not anti-virus software if all you are doing is playing fs2004.

If you want to free system resources why not just disable it? That said, I have found that it has no impact on fps at all but I'm still running 2002 (updated at least weekly, maybe 2003 and/or 2004 is different.


Richard

[klf]

Richard,
Good point. Sometimes I forget to enable the antivirus after flying. With my new computer, I have enough resources so that I don't have to turn off NAV 2003 to fly FS. I figure the more that I don't have to do things manually, the fewer mistakes I will make. I have flown FS with antivirus on and off and can not tell any difference in performance.
Ken

[Ed Lin]

Guys,

I'm a McAfee convert and switched to Kaspersky Anti-virus Personal back in the spring. It works like a charm, particularly on my XP partition where I boot to fly FS9. http://www.kaspersky.com/

But like any virusscan program, I always unload it from memory before loading FS9. Any virus protection program's gonna love to eat your resources.

Good luck!

[TheFlightMan]

Here are several user reviews about Kaspersky Antivirus:

http://download.com.com/3302-2239-10176949.html

TheFlightMan

[Ed Lin]

Well, I'm definately a "thumbs up" guy. The features are quite nice and I've had no problems.

FYI -- I was also testing McAfee Online for a spell (free trial) this past summer. I foolishly put an old floppy diskette that turned out to have a boot virus on it which infected my main pc. McAfee recognized the virus but was unable to clean it -- this was an older boot virus from the late 90's mind you, not some late/great trojan. I had to uninstall McAfee and reinstall Kaspersky which immediately found and cleaned my boot sector.