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Seeking opinions about combination antivirus/firewall products

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KenR:
I am interested in people's opinions about the best combination antivirus and firewall products. I know a number of people have one: AVG, Kaspersky, Zone Alarm, F-Secure, Agnitum, just to name a few. Does anyone have any knowledge about or familiarity with any of these products?

Thanks, Ken

Mark0:
At home, I'm used to have the free edition of AVG.
As per the firewall, I'm satisfied with the sort of "natural protection" given by beigh behind the typical NAT/router/broadband combo, so I have no additional software firewall running on the system.
I'm simply not a fan of / too concerned with the outbound control protection. Not a popular position, probably.

Darwin:
Great to see you back here Ken! I hope this signals an active return? We've missed you!

Anyway, I interpret your post to be seeking opinions about security suites, such as Zone Alarm Pro Internet Security. IOW, apps that protect against more than one kind of threat (spyware and virus, for example). These are attractive at first flush because they can replace up to 3 different apps from different vendors. However, I've shied away from them because I'd rather have the best anti-spyware, and the best anti-virus and the best firewall and I am not confident that one company can deliver the best in all three categories.

Having said that, I note that PC World or PC Mag (can't find the reference) just handed a big award to ZoneAlarm Pro Internet Security Suite. The review (whereever it is) claims that the anti-spyware component is now class leading, besting Spyware Doctor and Spyware Sweeper in that category and that the firewall is topnotch and the antivirus (licensed from Kapersky, I believe) is also top notch. I dunno... I recently disabled plain jane ZoneAlarm Pro (with antispywar) from running at system start because it's such a resource hog! Like Mark0, I now rely on my hardware firewall and Windows XP's built-in one. If I take my notebook off site, I'll enable ZoneAlarm...

Just my rambling two bits  :)

iphigenie:
It depends what kind of firewall you want

For all my grumbling about its update system which slowed my computer (it doesn't slow my laptop) I ended up staying with Bitdefender. It seems to fare really well in tests from the AV perspective, and the firewall component seems more than adequate (I have a packet filter on the router) - my only gripe with it is the lack of a firewall log.

It also turns out BD doesn't slow down things on my laptop, so i'm back to thinking something is wrong with my desktop... 

In the past I used AVG but never its firewall. It's a sturdy product and has a good pricing structure.

There are actually very few bad firewalls and bad virus scanners nowadays. Even the ones which used to be inadequate have improved. From discussions in the wilders forums I can tell that some have dry patches (where they fare lower on tests) but catch up etc.

None of them is perfect, and I think the trick is to figure out what threats are most likely to be your problem - and then pick the product that scores high in those.

I am pretty sure I won't fall for a lot of the social engineering viruses and web scams, but with all that i download i still want the old fashioned file protection to be very good. Other people who share their computer with family members who are less sceptical would probably want much higher spyware/malware protection etc.

Armando:
Hi all,

I'm sorry if I'm kind of hijacking this thread, but my question is pretty similar, so…
 
My kaspersky trial period has ended and I don't think that I'll buy the software. Every time I start my laptop, I have to wait between two and three more minutes before it becomes operational. I've tried everything — nothing will do (let's call it a bug). I've also had some weird slowdowns, and freezes. Nothing that I've experienced in the past with NOD32 trial. So I might just go back to it. The reason I abandonned the great NOD32 for Kaspersky was for the all-in-one solution: firewall/antivirus/spyware detection/etc.

Nowif I go back to NOD32, I won't have any spy ware detector or firewall. This is where I need some opinions...

I know that the Comodo firewall is pretty good (see http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php , for example), so is NOD32 (see http://www.av-comparatives.org/ )but what about the spyware aspect ?

Anybody uses a similar combination : NOD32, Comodo + ???? (spyware/adware preventer…)... Spysweeper???

Thanks to all who'll take the time to answer.

A.

edit : PS. for the "conclusion" of my little quest, see : https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=9679.msg73102#msg73102

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