What do you guys think of kaspersky antivirus? I'm currently using Symantec Antivirus, should I change?

if you are using the corp edition of symantec, then don't change. otherwise, symantec is a huge resource hog and i'd personally recommend kaspersky.

i use the enterprise edition; not norton..

oh i'd just keep the enterprise edition then - it's good.

Well, ver. 5 PRO is a good thing - You can choose for which Windows individually. Ver. 5 personal did not do it - and is slower then Pro. Especially if You use windows older then W2K. But if You use Your PC only for writing some documents and time-to-time surfing - SAV ver 9 is better.

I'm looking into Kaspersky right now.

I currently have mcafee virusscan 4.51 this workhorse has served me well for years but the product will go end of life in about 2 months which means DAT file updates will cease. So I need to replace it.

There are not many reviews on Kaspersky though the half dozen I read all fall into these statements:
- Kaspersky both v4.x and v5.x always captured every virus in the reviewer's test suite. Depending on the review, NAV/Mcafee either got em all or let one through.
- Interface to version 4.x was klunky and not for john q. public as such go with nav/mcafee. However reviews for Version 5.0 say interface is much better and address much of these concerns.
- Updates are published hourly support via email is supposedly timely.

As for my own "review". Here's it is...
I'm in my 2nd day of a 30 day trial of Kaspersky. Here's what I'm seeing thus far...
- Default setting to Kaspersky scanned all my outlook express inboxes and listed each e-mail message that contained a virus. Fortunately for me, all were in my spam folder or deleted folder. However I was REALLY pleased to have the tool tell me of their presence. I didn't know they were there. I'm guessing that with my old AV product I would have been notified of them if I tried to open them.

- Default setting to Kaspersky wouldn't let me launch MS-word. I found a setting in Kaspersky where it blocked VBA scripts from doing API calls. I set this from "block" to "prompt" and discovered when I have ms-word open a new document, a vba script is being run. For now I'm saying yes to its running because apparently that's what I've been doing all these years however When time permits I'm going to trace out how the heck vba scripts are defined in msword and then eliminate it. Again, I'm rather pleased that Kaspersky found this out for me. Though at first I blamed Kaspersky for being so buggy I couldn't run MS-word. So for now, chalk up another plus mark for kaspersky - this will turn into a black mark if I learn that this is a default behavior of ms-word that I cannot control, in which case I blame kaspersky for releasing a product that out of the box, isnt compatible with msword. It took me about an hour to diagnose what was going on.

- Documentation says Kaspersky releases updates upto hourly. The product by default checks for updates every three hours, I know for certain that I've gotten at least three updates within the 30 hours. Chalk another plus for Kaspersky. I like the thought that in a fast moving virus world I'll get protection quickly, probably when I'm not even at the pc. I've noticed that these intra-day updates seem to be v-small in the 10 to 150K area.

- The cost seems to be $66.50 a year. Activation/License seems to be the presence of a "key" file. Nefarious folks might try to pirate copies to other pc's by copying this file onto them. To counter this, known pirated key files are blacklisted.

- The test pc is a celeron 700 running xp-pro sp2. The drag of Kaspersky is on par with what I've seen with Mcafee. Its not dramatic but it does seem to be present. From a gut feeling and with no numerical proof I'd say the on-demand real time scanning of files with kaspersky is slower than mcaffee but again, its not dramatic or objectionable.

- Next test involves somthing I read in documentation where defragingg a FAT32 with kaspersky can be slower than before. I want to see by how much and real slow if this is fat32 thing that ntfs will cure.

All in all, I'm becoming pleased with Kaspersky and based on what I'm seeing I'm rather shocked that it isn't as well known as Norton/Mcafee.

Wow, that's a long post. Thanks for the info. I might consider Kaspersky after all.

I said next test I would perform was seeing how kaspersky affected defragging a fat32-HD.

BTW. I run "diskeeper" from Executive Software. Great product This product is set to defrag my diskfarm whenever the screensaver is running. If the disk doesn't need defragging the product is smart enough to not do it anyway. If the screen saver isn't running then the product isn't trying to defrag. If its defragging and I move the mouse defraging stops.

Anyway, because of the above I know that my drives always have minimal to zero fragmentation. Forcing a manual defrag of my ntfs drive ran lighting quick. Forcing a defrag on a fat32 volume caused a huge amount of cpu and I/O to occur yet little movement on the defrag progress bar. This was taking so dang long I gave up and stopped the defrag. I turned off kaspersky and restarted defrag -things went quickly. Turned kaspersky back on, started another defrag and tons of cpu/io occuring but little progress on defrag. So I stopped the defrag. Clearly this is an issue. I've been looking for an excuse to convert this drive to ntfs anyway so I did. I used utility called partition magic and did the convert. It Didn't take long and within a few minutes I was back into windows with with my fat32 drive now a ntfs drive. Forced a defrag on this drive with kaspersky running and everything ran quickly. So yea, running a defrag on a fat32 volume with kaspersky is a performance issue. It will defrag just VERY slowly.

For me this isn't a show stopper to buying/using kaspersky, but rather this info is something to keep in mind when either installing/configuring one's PC.

Actually, on all of my work PC's I use Kaspersky ver 5 for WORKSTATION - great administration and GOOD looking interface . . . as Oracle said - it differ from ver 4 boldly . . .
Since ver 3 I experimentaly use Kaspersky (known also as AVP), and ALWAYS eny version catches new viruses faster then other AV, but . . . Kaspersky (at least was, till ver4) less stable - lets see what eill be now.
BTW - official site www.kaspersky.ru or www.avp.ru, www.kaspersky.com

ALEX - Great to see someone with actual experience on this product, May I ask some questions...
- Whats the difference between WORKSTATION and Personal-pro? I read something about centralized administration but It wasn't clear If I had to buy something else to do the admin or if it was bundled in.

It also wasn't clear if I HAD to do centralized admin. For exmaple, assume I have 3 pc's: one at home, one at work, and one laptop:
- Could I simply buy a 3pk workstation package for $109 and be legal on all three?
- If I did buy this 3pk workstation could each one simply be a standalone personal-pro or would each one want/expect some central admin to take care of it.
- If key file happened to get copied to a 4th pc (or more). What happens then? Obviously the licensee agreement is being violated but what actually happens? Is the 4th pc simply incorrectly seen as valid and updates allowed, or is the violoation seen and updates deined to all four. This is nice to know both from a piracy standpoint and from a legal licensee standpoint as the legal license holder I wouldn't want to be shutdown based on a 3rd party copying a single file off my pc onto their pc.

Some new info...

There is USA based distributor for kaspersky!
When you buy from them there is also a usa toll free number for support!
877-332-3250 or EMAIL ICE (antivirus@useice.com)

Prices from the usa distributor are about a 5% discount than direct from kaspersky.com

The US distributor also has Govt/edu/non-profit pricing for all its corporate products. This is a 50% discount!
How great is it when you can have 5pk 2 yr license for $135.
I'm still a little confused on corporate workstation verus personal pro.
However I qualified for Govt/edu/non-profit pricing so I bought a 1-seat 2yr license for $31. My guess is I'll be just fine with it.

http://www.ice-kav.com/

Sorry - late answer.
I will not answer for how and wher to buy - I bought my licences for about 40USD for each licence. Each country differ.
But when I tried PersonalPro - it seemed to me less stable, less administrative, unlike ver.5 WORKSTATION.
I do not see any crime when one of 25 licences is used at home - ONLY my situation, we bought 25 lic., but are using about 20, so . . . in Kaspersky/update site are conecting less then 25 Pc's.
Interesting that INSIDE reg key a text is like:
Kaspersky Anti-Virus BO for Windows Russian Edition. 25-Workstation 1 year Renewal Licence Pack

(" Software distributer name. . . ( . . .)( Company - customer name)Country
So when you try to do something whit it, I gues it can be traced. Also, it seems that Kaspersky is more strict with the key from ver5 now.
I do not use centralized version - I use REPORT options - so if one PC is infected - it is reported to me.

Also in Personal version I did not see RISKWARE detection, detecting SpyWare programs. By default an option is switched OFF.

I've used kasp personal pro 5, of course untill recently when I had to delete every third party program.

It was pretty good, seemed to do a good job. However for me, it seemed to slow my boot time by about 45 seconds to a minute. Comp was unusable for about 30 seconds after it loaded the desktop. This is on a 2.8 p4 1 gig of ram. I guess I could of turned off boot sectoring, but I WAS LAZY.

I don't know. It was alright. I hear everybody rant how it catches more viruses quicker and faster, but I didn't see anything special about it. I thought the interface sucked. Instead of buttons where link type options. Pissed me off really.

I would just go with whatever catches your eye. They all work in almost the same fashion. So.. I guess whatever works for you.

Heres what kasp will look like...



Want more pics... I'll be glad to take them. PM me, or ask in post.