Scott Finnie unimpressed by NOD32 ...

[tranglos]

tranglos, that huge delay with NOD32 screams something is wrong somewhere in your system. Such thing happening open a text file (as big it may be) with that hardware is not normal.

-Lashiec (November 17, 2007, 01:47 PM)

Well, I've just found something very interesting. Accessing an .exe file, no matter how large (the largest I've found was over 35 MB), is instantaneous, as it should be. Accessing a plain text file of similar size (just lines of text, not even XML or any format NOD32 can recognize) with an unregistered extension produces a *huge* delay, 8 seconds or more before the file is displayed. TextPad opens this same file in a quarter of the time NOD32 takes to scan it! Renaming that file to .txt takes just as long. Renaming it back to the original extension, ditto.

I've now installed NOD32 3.0 trial on my Thinkpad as well, and I'm seeing the exact same behavior. The only thing the two computers have in common is the same version of XP SP2 PL. Unless there is something very wrong with that specific copy of Windows, I'd say it's NOD32, especially that the files II've used for testing are data files for a program I use on a daily basis, and the program loads them fully into RAM in no more than a second.

The interesting thing of course is that NOD32 scans executable files perfectly fast, but seems to have issues with text files. This may be an emergent property of the scanning algorithms they use, and of course I can instruct NOD32 not to look at those files. I need a 2-year, 3-machine license, so I'm being picky here, but with this discovery I think I can settle on NOD32 pretty safely.

Would you be willing to check how NOD32 behaves on your system? Just enable scanning all files and try viewing/opening a big enough textfile.

AntiVir's update scheduling is editable in the free version. And there's some trick to bypass that popups screen, it was posted in... Wilders?

-Lashiec (November 17, 2007, 01:47 PM)

Shucks, scheduling is indeed editable (just found it out when I fired up my laptop, withy Avira still installed) and I retract my statement, thank you. The wieird thing is I was looking for it and it was not there.

marek

[Lashiec]

Hmmm, that scanning request it's not possible, as I don't use NOD32. I tried it months ago, and I didn't see anything like that, that's why I commented the issue. Who knows, maybe it's a bug in the new version. I should say, though, that I didn't have such big files, but I know how to create a bigass one in seconds .

Don't worry about not finding it. The icon is not exactly informative

[Carol Haynes]

Are you saying all text files or just those with an unregistered extension?

I don't experience this behaviour at all. If I take a text file with txt extension it opens instantly. If I remove the extension or change the extension to total rubbish and then use file open in notepad to open it (or drop it on a notepad window) there is not delay at all.

The only time there is a delay is if I double click a file with an unregistered extension and windows pops up the 'which application should I use' type dialogue that there is a delay - but that is a function of windows not NOD32 and happens wven when NOD32 isn't inatlled. It only happens because Windows takes time to compile a list of application (just like it takes a long time for the Add/Remove applications dialogue to appear).

[f0dder]

I think the real reason they're dropping IMON is because they couldn't figure out how to make it work properly

[Ralf Maximus]

I think the real reason they're dropping IMON is because they couldn't figure out how to make it work properly

-f0dder (November 17, 2007, 04:28 PM)

I think you're right.  Plus, there's a number of competing products that do a better job.  If this means they are free to concentrate on their file-scanner, then even better.