Ken said:
One of the highest rated, not red, programs is G Data. I've never
heard of it before.
G Data has also been rated at av-comparatives.org where it always
squeaks past Avira (which surpasses Avast) for on-demand coverage. Just
to clarify again, just because G DATA surpassses Avira which surpasses
Avast is regarding the payware versions. They don't compare the
freeware versions (in which case G Data wouldn't be listed). G Data
also surpasses Avira and Avast for proactive coverage (old version
detecting new unknown pests).
Alas, G Data is moderately rated regarding false positives on which
users get alarmed and waste time eradicating. In av-comparatives.org, G
Data had 13 false positives while Avast had 14 and Avira had 15. Some
are even far worse, like AVG with 38 false positives. Trend Micro was
horrific at 166 false positives. MSE had zero false positives but then
it also has less coverage of detecting pests (it rates low at both
av-comparatives.org and VB100).
Do you, or anyone else here, know anything about it? Recommend it?
G Data, Trustport, F-Secure, GFI, and Coranti are multi-engine
detectors. They use a combination of AV engines so you get the overlap
that many us recommend (in on-demand scanners, not for on-access or
realtime scanners for which there should only be one active at a time).
They manage to get the engines working together.
http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/why-one-virus-engine-is-not-enough.pdf
For G Data, the cost is $30 (personal license) for their AV-only
product, $35 for their Internet Suite or TotalSecurity products (haven't
checked on what is the difference in these products). The other
multi-engine providers are also payware. Since freeware solutions (a
combination of them) suffice in giving me more than adequate protection,
and since I always end up doing the support myself or getting help from
peers versus wasting time with the payware tech support, I haven't
bothered even trialing this product.
Just because an AV engine is licensed for use by another vendor (whether
in a single- or multi-engine product) doesn't mean that other product
has equal detection. Avira licenses their engine to WebRoot yet Webroot
lags behind Avira on coverage and is even more horrific false positives
of 468 than TrendMicro at 166. For some reason, everyone licensing
Avira's engine gets significantly worse coverage than Avira.
Also, I've heard (not experienced) that multi-engine AV products are
more resource hungry; i.e., they don't have the smaller footprint (CPU,
memory, scan time) of the single-engine products. You have multiple
engines interrogating the same file or the same network traffic.
Multiplicity of function means more resources consumed. So if
lightweight is a requirement, even if payware was acceptable, the
multi-engines probably aren't an option.
Just because one product has 98.0% coverage and another has 99.4%, how
vulnerable are you really to that 1.4% difference? Unless you look at
the full population of pests used to test these products and see which
pests were missed by one that another detected, you don't know if they
are really old pests that have been deprecated in the signature database
or are extremely rare because their in-the-wild occurrence is
insignificant. You could be hard pressed to discover or experience what
was in that 1.4% difference. It's like 1.4% of the nails that are lying
in wait on the roadways to puncture your tire but in a state or country
where you will never be driving. When I buy tires for use in the
midwest USA, I don't bother about the driving conditions on Bolivia's
Death Road (
http://tinyurl.com/chl8dtt,
http://tinyurl.com/d232nac,
http://tinyurl.com/79sedm4). Never going to be there.
