Thinkpads Forum

Until recently I was a big fan of ESET Nod 32, but no longer.
I'm using Version 4.0.474.0
My keyboard & mouse are blocked by ESET every time it updates its signature files, because it does a basic scan again.
Highly irritating.
It has another quirk, in that it changes it's color (literally) if I have not done the latest M$ updates.
That is no business of an AV, telling me when to update my OS.

When my subscription is due for renewal, I will most likely change over to GData.

What's your experience with ESET, any better/worse?

I have been using ESS which is has firewall as well. Overall I am pretty satisfied, although I have had some problems. I was never able to get it installed on an X60 Tablet, and Eset support was never able to help. I went through many hours of heck, many reboots and reinstalls, the laptop would not boot into windows with version 4. I had to downgrade to version 3. I finally sold the tablet.

I saw a note now that the newest version 4.2 plays well with Thinkvantage software, that was the issue with Version 4.0.474.0. I have an X60s coming soon, we'll see. OTOH, I have it running very well with no problems on a bunch of T43's. I have one running 4.2 and the others are still on 4.0.474.0. I also find the color change a bit irritating but it's trying to tell us that we don't have all of our MS security updates installed, so not a biggie for me.

So in the end (except for the X60T) it has successfully kept 3 laptops free of harm for about a year now with little trouble. I cannot say why it would interfere with your mouse and KB but it should allow you to exclude them.

Mike

I have had really good experience with the latest version of AVG, its even faster that Microsoft Security Essentials.

I been using Nod32 for some years and found it to work pretty good, but i always found the support to be pretty bad. As soon as you have a problem and need some help you are lucky to get any useful response and if they find it hard to solve the problem they might just ignore you/the problem. Take a look in the support forum and you can find several issues that been unsolved for months and years that affect several customers. While i used to be a nod32 fan in the past as well i don't find it that good anymore. My subscription ended in February and i didn't renew my license this time.

Here is what i think about nod32 and why i deciced to switch:
- Slow fixing of bugs if fixed at all
- Bad support and slow response if any at all
- Very slow browsing of windows shares (might be fixed in 4.2, but i gave up nod32 before this release)
- Slow HTTP scanning (supposed to be fixed in 4.2 and they claim it's Microsoft's fault which might be true for all i know)
- The Threat Encyclopedia isn't even close to be a updated encyclopedia. So if you ever are infected and need info what the threat actually do and how to remove it you can forget about finding this info from Eset. Then you have to find this info from another AV vendor, but as most know they don't use the same name of the same threat so might be hard to find sometimes
- Extremely slow scanning of some files and often very small files even less than 1 mb
- It used to be a very light piece of software that was much better than the rest. The releases since v2 then the resource usage increased and they are no longer in their own league. Several other are actually better now i think
- They used to have one of the best (probably THE best heuristics), but while they didn't really manage to improve it a lot other got better and now they are no longer in the lead
- While they used to win several antivirus reviews/tests in the past now it seems like many other have better results and i haven't seen single test in the recent past where nod32 ended up in top 5
- While others seems to score much better because of "cloud technology" nod32 have no such feature and as always they don't give away any info what we can expect in the future or when it might happen
- The nod32 scan engine have more like average speed instead of being among the fastest like in the past
- There been several discussions why Eset always have few updates during the weekends and holidays. I find it hard to believe there are few/no threats EVERY single weekend and holiday. Eset doesn't really give a good answer, but as far as i been told it's a pretty small company and the reason is becasue there are few people working during the weekends/holidays so signatures are updated much slower during these days. They don't prioritize threats they consider "not so dangerous" during weekends/holidays. If this is true i think this is a horrible policy.
- While they released new versions with new features that use more resources and have more bugs they haven't really enhanced the engine a lot to better detect threats. It seems slower then it used to be though. Seem like new versions of nod32 is mostly visual enhancements

You might check out the tests from http://www.av-comparatives.org. They released a new report a few weeks ago. I would suggest to check out more reviews and tests and not trust a single source though. I been testing Avira, Norton and Microsoft recently and found Microsoft to be pretty slow and simple. Avira seem decent, but gave me some problems and pretty many false positives. Avira just released a new version though so i expect some updates that might fix the problems. I also have to say that i used to hate Norton like most people, but i'm actually pretty impressed with the latest release. It's basically a new product and cannot be compared with the 2008 and earlier releases. Also it run much lighter/faster on my computer compared to nod32.

What i find most important for a antivirus is of course the obvious to be protected, but also it should not slow down my computer, give me issues/cause problems and i don't want a popup every 5 minutes asking for permission for all kind of operations. I'm actually a bit surprised to say that Norton seems to be closest to match my requirements at the moment. I also checked out the Norton support community and seems like they are much better than Eset and actually give a response to the customers and solve issues/bugs a lot faster then Eset. I was thinking about trying gdata as well, but read several places that it's pretty slow so didn't bother. I also tried Kaspersky i found it to be slow and very annoying. I want a AV software that actually detect threats and not block everything like Kaspersky and ask you what to do....that's not detection it's annoying. By the way i'm using Windows 7 x64.

This is basically my opinion and some might disagree. It's not all of this is a undisputed fact in case someone want to start a long discussion because they disagree. I'm not trying to start a "what's the best antivirus" discussion.

The one problem I had, that needed attention from Eset, never got solved.
On the Wilders forum I found the solution to download/install the latest version.
That's another gripe: they never show/advise that there is a new release out (like the 4.2 you mention).
The "Update" function only looks for new signature-files, nothing else.
Hopeless....
I'll get 4.2 and see if that improves matters.
My subscription runs till August, but it definitely will NOT be renewed.

I'm not sure what kind of problem you had with nod32, but i would be surprised if 4.2 solve the problem. Unless i'm wrong (don't use nod32 anymore so cannot remember for sure) there is an option in the program where you choose to get program updates and not only signatures. A lot of people asked why they get no software updates even if selected, but the Eset representatives don't reply or come up with a useless reply. Not sure why they cannot make such a auto update work like most other software developers can.
At least they finally started with better changelogs that actually say what is fixed. They used to have a last line that said "Other minor fixes and improvements" and no one could tell you what those fixes actually did. When you have a problem and find a new version it's pretty useful to see what is actually fixed. While i would gladly recommend Nod32 in the past i would never recommend that software for anyone now.
Seems like no/bad support is common these days, but some actually seems to understand that a happy customer is a staying customer and the worst kind of customer treatment is no reply/feedback at all.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Until recently I was a big fan of ESET Nod 32, but no longer.
I'm using Version 4.0.474.0
My keyboard & mouse are blocked by ESET every time it updates its signature files, because it does a basic scan again.
Highly irritating.
It has another quirk, in that it changes it's color (literally) if I have not done the latest M$ updates.
That is no business of an AV, telling me when to update my OS.

When my subscription is due for renewal, I will most likely change over to GData.

What's your experience with ESET, any better/worse?

I was using GData for couple of years at work.... and I promised myself to keep away from this stuff forever....
Very resource consuming software. Got infected from e-mails several times.... so it's not very efficient as well. Now I'm proud user of BitDefender at home at of Kaspersky at work. Much better. Of course it's my personal assessment