NOD32 Antivirus version 2.5 (eset)

23 Jun 2006

This review only reflects the personal experiences & opinions of the author.

This is a bit of a saga but, if you’re not using NOD32, it’s worth sticking with it. It started when I upgraded my PC from Windows 98 SP2 to Windows XP & simultaneously moved from Norton AntiVirus (NAV) 2004 to Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2005. My machine’s performance had previously been quite adequate but after this it kept “falling over” for no apparent reason. I assumed it just wasn’t up to running XP, bought a new PC and thought no more about it.

A few months later my wife complained that her PC was running very slowly. She wasn’t kidding, I found it so pedestrian as to be virtually unusable. It seemed to have a lot of unnecessary applications installed so I decided to start from scratch. My first move was to reformat the hard drive (HD), install XP & download all the operating system (OS) updates. It wasn’t lightening fast but, nonetheless, quite adequate. I therefore resolved to install all the programs she needed one by one & thereby identify the culprit.

Naturally I started with the antivirus software - NIS 2005 - after which the performance degraded enormously. Following a bad experience with McAfee I’d become a bit of a Norton fan so I decided to withhold judgement & download all the updates (a vast amount considering the software was relatively new). The machine was still working in slow motion so I tried Norton’s help service. There seemed to be a underlying assumption that it must be the fault of some other application on the computer but, since I only had the OS & NIS installed (both fully up to date), the vast majority of the suggestions were irrelevant. This left me with a very short list - which I dutifully implemented – with no improvement whatsoever. Eventually there was a concession that I should claim a refund (it was within 3 months of purchase) & buy NAV 2005 instead.

I certainly did claim the refund but, having become disillusioned with Symantec, I decided to look further a field. A little Internet browsing threw up several reports of problems with NIS on slow PCs, plus favourable reviews on an antivirus package I’d never heard of – NOD32. It sounded good & they offered a 30-day free trial. I tried it, liked it & bought it. And now I have become a devotee – it does just what it says on the can – without chewing up excessive processor time & HD space. Updates arrive not weekly but typically several times a day, night-time & weekends too. To be fair to NIS, apparently it’s better than most at catching viruses; it just needs a fairly fast machine. The only thing I missed about it was the efficient anti-spam engine – but I’ve found a replacement for that as well, Outlook Spam Filter.

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