Antivirus that uses the least memory resources

My personal favorite is Avast.  It is not a resource hog, unlike Norton,  and generally has good reviews.  Plus, the free price is right.  Some people shy away from free AV utilities, thinking that you get what you pay for.  That is not necessarily the case.

 

I see you mentioned AVG. Here is a recent review of AVG and Avast: AVG & Avast Review

 

Avast! Home Edition (antivirus)

AVG Antivirus (antivirus)

 

The AVG is a great product. I have used the free version with no complaints.

 

However, I like NOD32 from ESET as it it compact, fast, and has not yet failed me on 6 home PC's. Most of the PC's are being used by kids and their age range is 18-22. So the use is very varied.

 

http://www.eset.com/index.php you can try for free or purchase. install and removal is very rapid. At a minimum I would visit the ESET web site and look at their anti-virus information.

I second the motion for Avast or AVG...not familiar with NOD32. I use Avast in conjunction with Zone Alarm free with good results, and it has updates available just about everyday.

I heard that Kaspersky and Bit Defender are the two best anti-virus programs out there and that neither uses up a lot of system resources.  I'm not sure about the quality of their scans though.  I heard that they don;t scan all the files and that would no doubt tbe an issue.  Maybe others with more knowledge about these 2 av programs could share their thoughts on them.

I have been using Kaspersky for quite a few years now and have nothing but praise for it.It is very light on your system and as far as scanning it does scan every file in a manual search but scheduled scans can be set with ichecker and iswift that scan only critical files and files that have been changed since the last scan. F-Secure is also a very light and highly reliable but i found it to be not as user friendly as i was always getting prompts for one thing or the other but i guess that's not a bad thing but i found Kaspersky to be a lot more user friendly and both have a free 30 day trial at their respective web sites.But the main thing that convinced me to try those 2 was being a daily visitor to this board for the last year i have yet to see any one using either of them looking for virus or spyware removal help.But that is just me i may have missed a posting somewhere along the way.I'm sure there are some who have seen some.

My opinion - I have used IBM AV until they sold their products to Symantec in the late 1990s and have used Symantec/Norton since then.  Although I have been attacked a few time (lesss than a hand full of times), none have been successful.  I also use Windows Defender, I did at one time use Spybot and Ad-Aware, but found them useless.  I never used any software firewall, but there is a limited SPI firewall in my router (Linksys WRT300N).  I have run some perfomance/timing tests and contrary to much stated opinion, have not found Symantec used excessive resources.  

I am very satisfied with the protection afforded by my router's firewall also. However my understanding is that hardware firewalls only block incoming threats, and do not notify you when an app on your PC is attempting to access the internet. At least my Linksys router does not.

 

I elected to keep my ZoneAlarm Free firewall. Although it has never detected anything really nasty trying to access the net, I still occasionally see attempts by programs (from my ISP, from MS, and from utilities I am trying out) to "phone home". I take great pleasure in blocking them all! 

 

A recent example: I was trialling McAfee's SiteAdvisor, and kept getting alerts from ZA that it wanted to access the net. Even when I told ZA to always allow it, I kept getting new alerts. So I went into ZA's Program Control, and found no less than six separate SiteAdvisor programs (SAService.exe, SiteAdv.exe- 4 instances! and SASynch.exe), all wanting to contact McAfee. I figured that was a tad too intrusive, and uninstalled SiteAdvisor. Even then, yet another McAfee app tried to report back on my uninstalling!

 

Another advantage to a software firewall is that most keep logs of all such attempts, both incoming and outgoing. Useful for troubleshooting when a real nasty gets into your PC.

Joe,

 

Since I don't believe there's any [storage nor updating of a ] site-advisor "threat database" on your PC, it's my understanding that the way site-advisor works is that, when you click on a web-page, site-advisor sends that URL back to McAfee to get the latest "scoop" on that page's current safety/threat status.   If so, that would seem an understandable/legitimate reason to "phone home".   No??

 

[The alternative... a "static" URL database on one's PC... unless updated at least daily (and we know most people don't)... would seem to be virtually worthless...]

 

Of course, I have no idea what, if any, "personal" information might be sent-along....

good to hear the positives about Kaspersky.  I've read that it has some serious compatibility issues with other software such as firewalls.  Is the Kaspersky Internet Security Suite worth it or just the anti-virus/anti-spyware option better? 

Finally, this may sound silly but, won't the AV software's effect on system resources be related to the amount of RAM on the system?  Taking this software (Kaspersky) for example, would it run better on a system that has more than 1 GB of RAM (maybe around 1.5 GB) in comparison to one that has less (say around 512 MB RAM to 768 MB RAM)?  I've heard that it (Kaspersky) takes up a little more than 85 MB of RAM.

RESOURCE UTILIZATION - sse last chart   - data from ESET web site Why ESET's NOD32?
Technology, not brand names, stops malware.

Compare

Industry tests and data to show the differences in detection, size and speed of NOD32's top competitors. Compare the data against Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky and Trend. Find out why NOD32 is the Safest, Fastest, Smallest solution.

Best Detection of Known and Evolving Threats

• Approximately 88% of threats are proactively detected using ThreatSense heuristics. For example, all variants of MyDoom, Netsky, Bagle and Mytob were detected heuristically - before most other vendors even had a signature. Compare to Symantec, McAfee, Trend, and Kaspersky.
• The leader in Advanced + awards from AV-Comparatives.org.
• In-the-Wild Virus Detection - ESET is the record holder of 35 VB100% awards collected over the last 7 years. These tests validate the products ability to detect known malware. (source: www.virusbtn.com).

• NOD32 has missed fewer In-the-Wild viruses than any other vendor in VirusBulletin testing, as shown below.

Fastest Performance

With NOD32, it's not necessary to sacrifice speed for detection. Scanning and update processes happen behind the scenes without a perceptible decrease in performance.

• 19MB/sec scanning rate under Windows 2003
• Three to 34 times faster than the leading brands under Windows XP
• Keep employees productive by minimizing the impact on their systems

Minimal Resource Utilization

NOD32 conserves resources on disk and in memory, leaving more room for critical applications. It is compact enough to run on modest systems, saving valuable memory without compromising performance or functionality, yet powerful enough to slam the door on malware intrusions. 

• Utilizes approximately 22MB of RAM, one of the smallest packages in the industry
• Low RAM usage and intelligent caching reduces disk access and memory paging
• Low 4% performance overhead (source: Canon/ESET testing, August 2006) 
• 
  

" There are three kinds of lies: Lies, [an adjective the DELL "obscenity" filter wouldn't let through] Lies, and Statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli 

Could their be a bit of bias in the prior post?

You can get unbiased tests from Consumers Reports.  Also checkout Cnet.com.  I personally use McAfee which is OK except when it scans.  The firewall works very well, and sets automatically.  The AV detection is dependably good.  McAfee has a great forum to help solve problems and share facts.  The site advisor gives good advice when using Goggle.  Kapersky is a Russian program and is expensive.  I do not like its interface. Remember Pearl Harbor!