Forum Home
PC World Chat
 
Thread ID: 116458 2011-03-04 21:16:00 Latest PCworld Rubbish wainuitech (129) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1183535 2011-03-04 21:16:00 Cant the NZ PC world get original up to date articles :groan:

The one I'm referring to is the "latest" Security tests. Once again the article taken form PCworld back in December Last year Here s the proof (www.pcworld.com).
Once again Norton must have paid the most $$ as it says its the best, yet in real world usage techs see badly infected PC's with Norton all the time.

While NO AV is perfect, some of the tests are a load of rubbish as compared to what actually happens in the real world. I currently got a persons PC here,Just finished it yesterday, had the latest Norton on, full of malware to the point of disabling the software --- yeah real good stuff.

One thing that made me laugh -- Whats this guy doing (Must be a idiot) - The article makes the claim.
Eset's serious drawbacks. Its download and installation process was the most aggravating of all the apps we've reviewed, an exercise in frustration as you're required to register and enter Eset-provided user names and passwords again and again. WTF!! come on get real.

Heres the "Again and again" Assuming you purchase it on line, when you get the user name and password, Then you download the program, you have to enter it to allow the download So thats ONCE. Then you enter it again when installing on the machine Thats TWICE. Last time I downloaded Norton as a trial, it wanted a LOT more input than Nod to download, that was a pain.

The way the article is written it suggests you have to enter it many times and click next a few times -- HARD to do ? bull sh1t.

OK moan for the day :D

Edited: seems they cant even get the figures correct - if you look at the real test results From Here (www.av-test.org) - in the magazine its stated several different Percentages, yet on the real tests by AV-Tests.org its completely different figures. 		wainuitech (129)
1183536 2011-03-04 21:21:00 write in and complain or something.

or offer to do 'real world tests yourself.

i remember you did a thread a while ago highlighting what actually happens with the various AV's, was good 		GameJunkie (72)
1183537 2011-03-04 21:36:00 I'll stick with Nod 32 - I don't know for sure it works any better than anything else but I have a satisfactory level of self-delusion that it does.

Paper magazines can never keep up with those of us who read ahead on the internet anyway, and always a little sceptical of these tests as no two magazines ever seem to get the same results.

I actually think local content and stories are better, always read Geoff Palmer first. I'd rather read how someone tested, invented or built something in their shed in Ekatahuna than read regurgated content from overseas. 		Twelvevolts (5457)
1183538 2011-03-04 22:25:00 I'm totally with you wainuitech - just serviced a laptop which a relative was complaining was running slow and booting slow (it's a late model Asus running Win7 Home Premium 64bit with HEAPS of RAM) . Her father, in his wisdom, had installed Norton 360 for her - still had a fair amount of time left on the subscription too .

I uninstalled the Norton crap, turned on Windows Firewall and installed MSSE . The machine is running sweet!

I also installed and ran MalWareBytes and found a heap of nasty BHO's - zapped them and told her to be more careful about the sites she instals stuff from . She is also (much to my shame and anger) a Torrenter and user of pirate software . I even provided her a legit copy of Office 2010 to replace the 2007 version that she wouldn't update via Windows Update (therefore leaving her exposed to security threats) because she was worried Microsoft would find her!!!

In hindsight, I guess my response should have been: "Serves you right! **** off!!"

@GameJunkie - I don't know whether it would be possible to use wainuitech's (and the rest of us) examples of how big a FAIL Norton and McAfee consumer products are .

Lab tests are in a controlled environment, so results are predictable (especially if you design your software to pass the lab tests with flying colours!!) .

The problem with real world examples is the variability of circumstances: users turning off firewalls to play games then browsing to sites they shouldn't; disabling, for whatever reason, AV updates etc . . .

Perhaps rather than getting wainuitech to provide real world tests, the magazine could add a section at the end of the AV "review" where comments from this forum could be included . A kind of reality check for the test lab results - might give punters a more balanced view .

But of course that might affect advertising revenue . . . :( 		johcar (6283)
1183539 2011-03-04 22:37:00 Perhaps rather than getting wainuitech to provide real world tests, the magazine could add a section at the end of the AV "review" where comments from this forum could be included. :eek: I can just see the text in the magazine:

Real world results from PCWorld forum Users **** **** ****** ****** ****

Censored and couldn't be printed of course :lol:


Lab tests are in a controlled environment, so results are predictable (especially if you design your software to pass the lab tests with flying colours!!). no surprise there :thumbs:

Geoff Palmer's and Siobhan's articles are usually on the money :) They actually write items, which while not every one will agree with, are at least local, like the Telcom debacles, and the mega motion Match-up ( Feb 2011) actually showing pictures of the testing, either that or damn good photo shop :D 		wainuitech (129)
1183540 2011-03-04 22:44:00 Or:

Test Results from the Real World Experiences of Contributors to the PF1 Forum

(Score include factors for ease of use, intrusiveness/RAM hogging, ease of infection while being run)

Norton 360: -36/10
McAfee: -32/10
MSSE: 9.8/10
ESET: 9.8/10
Avast: 7/10 		johcar (6283)
1183541 2011-03-05 00:17:00 I now use G Data from Germany. wmoore (6009)
1183542 2011-03-05 01:35:00 I remember you can't copy and paste Norton's serial code into the registration screen.
I think you probably can but isn't the code 13 digits , split into few sections where you can copy section and paste section at a time?

For ESET you can just copy the username and then the password all in 1 go. 		Ninjabear (2948)
1183543 2011-03-05 02:24:00 You are missing Wainuitechs point.

I found that the reviews in PCWorld were very superflous.

Eg they used to review printers and basically just listed the specifications.

I wanted to know, what was the quality like, how fast was the first page.
How much were the ink cartridges.
How many real pages did the ink cartridges print.
How reliable was the printer ?

The same applied to digital cameras.

And yes in their Anti Virus comparison's it was always Norton or Mccaffee that were top (the two dearest ones)
Yet know one on here would ever use them.
I would not use Norton if they gave me a life time subscription for free.

The sad thing about that was that they made very good Motor Bikes
And Peter Norton made a very good utility for recovering deleted files.
Then he/they became too big and corporate like. 		Digby (677)
1183544 2011-03-05 04:00:00 Yeah Avast got top free too, wtf?!

I thought I'd try the ClamAV-based Immunet, and it was pretty good, light on the resources, but started with a few false-positives which just pissed me off. Then, there was no way to easily "whitelist" or say "Restore and ignore this". If I wanna use DotA Launcher, I shouldn't have to battle my stupid AV program. So that's gone.

Gonna give Avira a try, it's been supposedly improving quite a lot lately, will see how it goes.

Also, Trend Micro doesn't *just* use 3MB of RAM, get real ....

And I echo the sentiments, "Symantecs blocked fully 96% of real-world attacks, and partially blocked the remaining 4%". That'd make a fine Tui Beer ad right there!

A mate of mine was also wanting to buy a GTX460 today. He read about it in this months mag. Basically it just rattles off the list of specs, and here's what they say about the card "The versatile GTX 460 will go down in history as a great mainstream video card, it's just that popular".... but it says little else. Would have liked to know things like "Does this card run hot?" or "Is it noisy with that big whorey fan?" or "Heres a comparison of 5-6 common games vs other cards we've reviewed" and "this is what else came in the pack"... 		Chilling_Silence (9)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9