Quote:
Originally Posted by danwdoo
If I only had a dollar for every time someone said that after I had removed Norton from their system...  |
Norton got a bad rap in the early 2000s. It got much better at some point. That said, any AV is going to cause some overhead (file scanning, etc).
I personally use Norton without issue at home. I'm a IT security professional at work, so I've been getting some free Symantec for a while since we're a Symantec shop. It runs fine these days.
Windows Defender doesn't cut it. Defender / MSE used to be good, but it tests terribly now - I think because they're the first malware authors expect to dodge (as it is default on so many installations). It simply doesn't cut it any more.
I can tell you as a security professional, there are people like me working at companies actively hunting malware and submitting it to reputable malware companies - as well as the malware research going on. It's worth a few bucks a year (not a lot, but a few, given the 40% detection rate of AV these days) to run something decent. IMO that's Symantec / Kaspersky / NOD32.
If you're going to go free, you're better off with Avast or the like these days. Can't believe I'm saying that. I used to install MSE all the time. Testing shows it's pretty awful these days. For example:
https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/
Quote:
Originally Posted by danwdoo
I've only used Windows Defender/Security Essentials since it came out years ago (it was a separate download before they integrated it into the OS) and I have never had any viruses or malware. That said, I am careful about where I obtain files from and use caution on files in email.
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Are you sure? Do you regularly review the network traffic coming out of your firewall for suspicious traffic, as well as reviewing actively running services, and Windows scheduler entries / registry start up entries?
I see people claim the above a lot ("I haven't had a virus") because they don't understand that a good handful of modern malware is VERY quiet unless you know what you are looking for. I find malware for a living and after a few months with an install I can't be sure I'm not infected without doing those things. A lot of malware is quiet as they are simply using your machine as a botnet / remote jumpoff point to attack others. I'd hazard a guess that all you can say is you haven't had any obvious malware (banking trojans, adware, etc).
On the Win10 upgrade front, I'm having some issues with my Asus laptop sleeping - it results in a nasty bootloop cycle. Googling suggests it is the Intel HD4600 drivers. The only fix I saw was to roll back to the 2013 drivers Asus provides, however, it didn't help for me (I've disabled sleep in the meantime).
For folks using their laptop for gaming, there's some issues with InputMapper / DS4Windows (Dualshock 4 software). Requires some workarounds at the moment.