NOD32, Anti-virus holy grail?
I recently built a new PC and was trying to decide which anti-virus software to use on it. I’d not had this decision to make for many, many years…. since 1990, when Norton Anti-Virus was introduced.
I’ve stuck with Norton Anti-virus all that time, happily paying my subscription annually in the knowledge that I was protected from viruses. However since the 2003 release and possibly earlier I’ve noticed a sharp increase in the amount of resources and time Norton spends thrashing around on my harddrives. I believe I’m not alone, many people have complained about this, however Symantec continue to ‘bloat’ Anti-Virus with each subsequent release. Norton Anti-Virus 2006 was and probably will remain the last release of the product that I purchase.
Certainly I didn’t want to load Norton on my shiney new PC, I needed an alternative anti-virus solution. Something that harked back to the super fast and effective early releases of the Norton product.
I believe that product is NOD32 from Esnet.
NOD32 is largely written in assembly code, which shows in it’s performance. It’s throughput of files when scanning and minimal system impact has to be seen to be believed. In these early days I can’t judge it’s detection rate (I rarely encounter viruses anyway due to being very wary and diligent), however it has the lowest failure rate in tests performed by Virus Bulletin, which can’t be a bad thing. That said it did find 1 trojan on my archived data disk that Norton had never found.
It does have it’s downside, user-friendliness isn’t all it could be. Components of the product have strange 4 letter acronyms e.g. AMON, DMON, IMON, EMON (a side-effect of being an assembly language programmer I suspect!) and setup options are plentiful, maybe too plentiful? However, given a little patience and thought, it does all make sense and should be possible for most ‘computer literate’ people to setup and configure without too much pain.
After initial setup and configuration, it just works, it really is barely noticeable - especially if go for the rather good “silent mode” option. Silent mode only disturbs you if it has a reason to, no more daft “I’m great because I’ve just managed to update myself” style popups.
My trial period (one month) is about to expire, they will certainly be getting my £46 for a 1 PC, 3 year licence, worth every penny. It’s also worth noting they have student and non-profit organisation rates too.
