So at work we had been been using AVG Free anti-virus for our software security needs for years without problems until just 2 days ago when it falsely detected our third-party vendor's software as "suspicious" and quarantined it, effectively locking us our of our systems. So we uninstalled that noise and decided to go with one of the paid solutions our vendor recommended: ESET NOD32 or Norton. I've heard good things about ESET, I know one of the techs who worked on my aunt's laptop recommended it for her and she's said its saved her from a couple nasty trojans she'd accidentally tried to download a couple times, but I was more familiar with Norton having had good experience with Norton Internet Security, which was the first line of products from Symantec that they finally streamlined and removed most of the bloat that had plagued earlier versions of Norton. But they're phasing out NIS in favor of just plain "Norton Security", their new "comprehensive" security suite that's basically Norton 360 on steroids.
Well, let me tell you: the BLOAT is back! IN FORCE! These old systems run alright when Norton Security is idle, but once it starts a "background" scan, look out! Takes over a minute to even pull up a customer's record, let alone print something. Even disabling the auto-scan and setting it to "manual scheduling only" at night still doesn't stop it from popping up nagging warnings from its "Smart" Firewall component about suspicious Internet activity by our vendor's software, which we have to keep manually saying "Allow" or it won't communicate with remote servers. Disabling the Smart Firewall altogether only makes the software scream about how "you're not fully protected" and nag city. Worst of all, the entire fucking package is over 331MB large! We only have 4GB of RAM in these 7-year-old 2.6GHz Athlon systems running Windows Vista Business (32-bit), and Windows Shitsta and our vendor's software takes up most of that, so there is serious hard drive gnashing as the system keeps running out of RAM, especially when booting up. So fuck that shit, we've fallen back to Microsoft Security Essentials (only 22MB) which doesn't provide much security, but at least its free with few "false positives" and relatively easy on system resources and overhead. We might give ESET a try, but the boss is a bit gun-shy now of trying another paid package. What we really need to do is upgrade our systems hardware, but its a mom-and-pop operation, and he's not eager to spend thousands again like it cost to set these things up in the first place. I'm trying to convince him that we could spend just $700 each on two new Core i7-4770 systems with 8GB RAM running Windows 7 Pro which would blow our current "solution" out of the water, but he's a cheap-skate and just wants to run with these things until they die.
But fuck Symantec. If they ever try to force me to "upgrade" from NIS at home to NS before my 2-year subscription expires, I will demand a fucking refund. Quite frankly, I'm about getting ready to jump ship on Microshaft and all associated products altogether once I finish school and don't need Microsoft Office any more, and I refuse to pay an annual fee for web-based Office 365 after already shelling out $200 for Office 2013 Pro Plus. Windows 10 is looking to be just as sucky as 8 was, with no hope on the horizon. Once Windows 7 Professional support gets yanked in 2022, I think it might be time to say bye-bye for good. Hopefully by then Linux will have some decent third-party driver support for things like multi-function printer/fax/scanners and other odd-ball things like police radar detector software/map upgrading programs and what not, as that's been my main reservation so far -- that, and what few first-person games I still play on occasion, of course. But if Linux ever really catches on, hackers will start targeting it with more and more malware as well, so an anti-virus program is always going to be needed.
What do you guys use on older hardware? Are there any other freebie solutions that do a decent job but don't hog system resources? Is ESET NOD32 worth giving a try, even if it does cost $50/year to license? Seems like they all got some flaws and disadvantages these days... no one perfect solution, unless you are running bleeding-edge hardware and can handle all the bloat.
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