Its been quite sometime and I am still looking for Internet Security softs. I have used quite many combinations NAV, AVG, eTrust etc etc, currently I am using Kaspersky 6.

Why discussing this?
At some point or the other we all want, well if not need, to know which thing will be one of the best, which will be the best protection suite.

Lets discuss the pros and cons of what we have used.

Kaspersky v6

The internet security pack is outstanding. Overall I would love to have it all the time but there are couple of things that puts it off the league of the best contenders -- It checks quite many things which makes everything sluggish. Its good on one hand but on the other, when it is running machine becomes as slow as snail. Either you should have a gig of RAM to run it, but on slower ones like 256 megs or 512 it seems to be sluggish.


[moderators if you think it is in wrong place, please move it and advice me where to put it]

You won't be getting much discussion here since only the moderators are allowed to respond to posters.


The purists and myself prefer to select a STANDALONE antivirus tool and the same for a firewall. All the rest that comes with the bloatware SUITES you can generally do without.

The search for perfection is often an illusion (good/better/best). The top ten (10) AV tools do an ADEQUATE job against most COMMON infections. The main effectiveness distinction is detection and response differences often measured in hours (some are slower to respond) and by particularly outstanding characteristics for those proactive tools that rely significantly less on formal virus definition updates.

Obscure suspect items will often be missed by many of the vendors or only addressed by the relative few (who may have encountered the existence of such an infection) - not generally a problem because few users will ever encounter such obscure (low probability encounter) infections. In those cases, a second opinion from multiple vendor engines ( http://www.virustotal.com/ ) is warranted and advisable.


THe following newletters adequately cover such considerations and issues:

FIREWALLS: http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/90.htm#swfw

ANTIVIRUS:
Looking for the right AV:
http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/83.htm#avv
http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/88.htm#avvii

Layered Security:
http://techsupportalert.com/free-vs-paid-av.htm
http://techsupportalert.com/security_scanners.htm