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[sevenlayermuddle]

I've been meaning for a few weeks to put in a good word for Kaspersky.  After over a decade of totally unprotected (but careful) surfing, I finally picked up a nasty "ultimate defender" Trojan.  I dealt with it and then decided to install AV, I chose Kaspersky for various reasons I won't go into.

What impressed me was that I subsequently decided that, with hindsight, I'd have preferred the three-user version so I could install it on my laptop too.  There seemed to be no 'off the shelf' licence upgrade on their website, so I sent a groveling email to Kaspersky....

...They responded in less than an hour, and it was a proper response - not auto-generated - from a real (English speaking) person in a real English town.  She set me up with specially created a link to a licence 'upgrade' which allowed gave me a new licence(s) for which I had to pay only £10 (the normal retail differential).   Within two hours of sending that email, they'd generated the licences and I'd got them installed on my systems.   Not bad, huh?

I don't know how good it is at its job, but I'm cynical about all AV software (that's why I ran without protection for so long).    I'm so cynical, however, that I probably won't be disappointed.    So far it seems fine, quite unobtrusive, but reassuring to know it's there.   Their firewall is OK I think, but awfully complicated to configure.  I'm afraid their so-called 24-hour telephone support is just a joke, little more than a recorded message telling you to check this, that, and the other.  But I assume that's par for the course.

[Floydoid]

I've not used Kaspersky myself, but it has the reputation of being one of the best there is.

[kitz]

Thanks for that review 7LM.

Must admit Im not sure about AV. right now, since I cant find one I'm happy with and dont want to shell out for something that I may be unhappy with. 
Dont laugh - but for many years I used NAV, (the standalone version) which I was actually very happy with.   Until I got a new lappy which came with the then latest version..  which was bulk bulk and horrible and slow. 

I must admit I was a bit naughty and took that version off and used a CD installation for another PC which ran ever so sweet.  lol  yeah back in the days when you could do that 

For the past couple of years Ive been using either AVG (which I fell out with last year as it was falsely marking some of my college days progs I wrote as malicious) and Ive since been using Avast..  which Im still not 100% happy with.

All I want really is a decent basic AV with a real time scanner...  I dont want or need any of the additional bloat or rubbish add-ons that so many of the AV products these days seem to include. I also want one that allows me fairly easily to mark as 'yes that program is ok and no its not malware.' and wont ever nag me about it again.

[Floydoid]

I agree Kitz... I used to use NAV as a stand alone, then as part of NSW 2002 and it was excellent and bloat free. 

Avast is the best freebie that I've found so far.

[kitz]

I dont mind paying for an AV if its decent and it suits my needs - I'm well aware that the time and effort and programming and support has to come from somewhere.
If I like a program and its a reasonable price/I can afford it then I'll buy it.

What does irk me is when you pay for something and you dont like it or its bulk and you end up not using it and rolling back (eg Vista).
Same with NAV.   I suppose I could never understand why 2002/2003 ran perfectly fine with hardly any resources being used.  But that all changed with NAV 2004. :/


Oops anyhow sorry 7LM - a wee bit off topic - this is supposed to be about Kapersky.

Ive just been looking at their prices on their site.. thats quite a good deal in that its only an extra tenner for 2x extra licenses.   You cant complain at a fiver each.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Before buying Kaspersy, I tried two others... paid download versions of Symantec and PC-Tools.

Each of those hung on installation.  I now think that was because the Trojan 'Ultimate Defender', which masquerades as an AV itself, was conflicting with them, but it would have been nice if they'd given an error message to that effect whereas they just hung.  So I requested refunds and headed down to PC World for a boxed version of Kasperky, which I bought because it wasn't Norton (I have an old prejudice against Norton).

I don't know if Kaspersky would have installed cleanly because, by the time I installed it, I'd already got my system pretty much back to normal using XP's 'Restore'.  Kaspersky duly found various bits of Ultimate Defender and away they went.  Superantispyware subsequently found two more files that Kaspersky missed, but I think they were just harmless .dat files that 'Ultimate Defender' installed as fake viruses to give itself something to report.

BTW - I think it's very sleazy that, in the small print of the T&C for PC-Tools, you agree to a continuous authority for annual updates charged against your credit card.  Other vendors (Sophos) may do the same, I'm not sure.  I don't think Kaspersky do, but I'll be carefully checking my statements in a year's time.  It was another reason I was keen to cancel, as I hadn't noticed it when I purchased.

[guest]

I used KAV for years (way way way before most people heard of it), then around 3-4 years ago it went downhill (IMHO) and turned into bloatware. I'd say that if the previous version of KAV got 10/10, then the current version is worth 7/10, but that's a personal viewpoint as I want AV that uses minimal resources and doesn't popup garbage (hello Symantec!). I'm still quite annoyed about KAV which shows how much I once liked it.

NOD32 (which once upon a time used the KAV engine) was my chosen replacement and I've been using that ever since.

AV is essential if you have kids and they use IM - I see 5-10 trojan reports a month on the kids boxes at this time of year and they all come via Hotmail/Messenger

[sevenlayermuddle]

FYI,

...Here's a quick follow up to this thread which I started a week or few back as a 'pro-kaspersky'...

On Tuesday, they messed up big-time with a database update.  For the first time since I installed AV, I got a web access denied by Kaspersky, reason: 'databases'.   But what was this dodgy, embarassing and maybe illegal website that I was trying to view...? 

...none other than http://www.google.com.   It seems their databases had blacklisted google and all pages within google.

They fixed it, but not until a day and a night after I first noticed it and (among many thousands of others' I'm sure) reported it to them.

[kitz]