On Tuesday 16 September 2008 11:21:48 Peter J Murray wrote:
> I think I'd rather be happy with the product than the company, as
> opposed to the other way around.  AVG is not the product it was, sadly,
> and I use AVAST for personal consultations for those desiring free anti
> virus.  I don't particularly enjoy dealing with MSU's reseller of NOD32
> (corrupt license keys, etc), but it happens so infrequently I'll deal
> with them.
>
> That being said, NOD32 doesn't catch nearly as much as it should, and
> has had some frustrating problems in the past with the roll out of the
> new version 3, including hard lockups of Windows Servers, with no event
> log entries.
>
> http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=88
> http://osblues.com/2008/06/03/avg-destroys-web-analytics/
>
> David McFarlane wrote:
> > I recently had a bad experience purchasing NOD32.  I like the product,
> > but I do not like how the company does business (a common experience
> > with other products/companies).  So I am thinking of switching to AVG
> > Anti-Virus, which seems pretty good.  Before I do, can anybody tell me
> > their bad experiences with how Grisoft does business?  If they are
> > just as bad then perhaps I should just stick with the devil I know.
> > Thanks.
> >
> > -- David McFarlane

I agree -- the product usefulness comes first, then the companies. Not that
I like being put into the ignore queue on the phone.  I haven't heard of folks
complaining about ordering though, and I've gotten at least a dozen friends
to get NOD.  I am hoping that you got them at a bad time.

As for not catching stuff fast enough, there are two issues in general for me.
The first is how good it is at catching stuff in general, and then how fast 
they are at definition file updates.  NOD32 caught variants of the Bagel 
virus before they knew exactly what they were.  I'm not sure any other AV
software has had the trck record of eset.  The issue of update speed is an
interesting one.  I've seen Kaspersky(sp?) get something faster, but also
the other way around.  I think all the good AV packages (NOD, Kaspersky,
Sophos) run neck and neck on that regard.

Lastly, for me there is the issue of how often horrid security problems
are found in the package, and how often the package forgets about some
definition.  NOD32 hasn't had that many update-me-now types of problems.
I can't say how often the definition files are messed up, but I saw that
enough with McAfee and Symantec that I started the search for something
else.

--STeve Andre'