Virus Bulletin has released its August 2009 test results for Windows Vista SP2 Business. The company examined 35 anti-malware products and put them through their paces. In order to pass the basic requirements of the test, applications must detect all malware known to be \"In the Wild\" while not presenting any false positives. The products are tested in their default settings and must succeed in both on-demand and on-access detections.

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Symantec, in my experience, has always failed as an Antivirus. Everytime I have ever used it I have received loads of false positives. Not to mention, it is a major resource hog. Since I was told about Avast professional 3 years ago, I have refused to look back.

I did an internal company review of Avast and convinced my enterprise level company to switch from McAfee to Avast as well. The switch reduced server workload and helped my IT department to increase productivity, and focus on other problems rather than chasing down user downloaded viruses and running daily spyware tests.

What about Bitdefender....? Its not even tested? Why? Its one of the higher rather AVs...

What EMSI A-Squared? I found it best, and I think it is Europe's highest-rated. Have found Norton to be the worst by far. Does gates own part of all of Norton?

@hamsteyr: I could be very wrong, but I am pretty sure that AV companies have to submit their product to be tested - in which case it would be BitDefender's fault for not being included ;).

Thanks for the clarification there, Matt. I was wondering that (hamsteyr's comment) as well. I have used McAfee, Norton, and Symantec...all I would say did not fit the bill (especially McAfee...what total rubbish). I am currently using BitDefender and have been satisfied (although their customer support is weak and they pretty much have no support yet for Win7). On my Win7 machine I am using Avira (free) which also seems to be very good.

This is why Norton had to be forced onto peoples PC's in the first place, they suck, they know it, they just hope you deal with it.

Gee, and now its Opera's turn to play that game.

Some of the companies with a pass mark can be had in a free version. Not bad at all. The copies of Sophos that my company owns offers free home versions to employees. This can be a good deal. My ISP offers McAfee for free as well. I think that the days of paid for home anti-virus are numbered.

Symantec: "But, we have awards showing that we used to be a good product!"

From my past experience cleaning up friends and company computer systems, Symantec's is easily taken down by most viruses leaving a system vulnerable. And, as Wendig0 points out, Symantec is a resource hog as it takes over a system providing you this false feeling of security. I had thought that Endpoint would be their return, but they got lazy. And the new engine wasn't that impressive.

I have been computing since 1997 and never had an AV installed on my system. Never had a issue as well. I almost never download softwares from unknown sites/users.
Not saying my system is not protected, i use firefox with noscript and also run a freeware ProcessGuard to control all the processes running on my system.
AV softwares are memory hogging and too intrusive. IMO these AV companies themselves make/spread viruses and threats to keep their business on the roll. I just dont trust them.

Waqas

Any feedback on Sophos?

I am curious to see how free programs such as Avast fair in these tests

i think it's atrocious that people believe that if they stick to "safe" sites that they will never have any problems!! HELLO - don't you know that sites can get hacked??!!! all it takes is one trojan embedded in the favicon of a site to compromise your system and you won't even know it. hmmm.... you don't have any A/V or A/M and you say you've never had a problem....... coincidence?? unless they want to destroy your system, they DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW! [/ranting_at_the_retards]

I agree! I've been using the Residential (free) Avast! for several years and have had terrific success with it. It has even identified corrupt files!

I've tested many AV and AM proggies. Symantec is a bad neighbor, not wanting to play fair with too many other proggies. I'm currently happy with Eset NOD32 Antivirus. And I got a good rebate on it through one of the stores at http://PaymentKey.com.
Hope that helps yous.
Leafgreen

Eset Nod32 for the win!!

I use AVG, Ad-Aware, Spyboy Search & Destroy and ZoneAlarm, and this combination has worked fine for me ever since I got it. Memory hogging isn't a big concern of mine as I have a gaming rig, and thus plenty of performance.

I fix computers on the side and been doing it for many years. I am not a
novice computer user so please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
all the systems i have fixed had good AV installed so ....
If you read my post carefully i have mentioned that i do protect my system
with couple of softwares like NOScript on firefox and Process guard only to mention a few. I have couple of other softwares on there but not an AV.
I don't reply on safe sites only.

If you are really looking for something that will drastically reduce the workload on the servers even better then avast try Avira or Eset smart security 4. Extremely small footprints and rated the top two out of all in performance and reliability and detection. You will never even know that they are running.

If you are really looking for something that will drastically reduce the workload on the servers even better then avast try Avira or Eset smart security 4. Extremely small footprints and rated the top two out of all in performance and reliability and detection. You will never even know that they are running.

Says who?