Kaspersky - ENDEX

I'm usually quite loyal to the stuff I buy with the reason for that being a lot of research before I take the plunge. When the time comes to renew old or worn out stuff, I'll usually go back to the same people. There's usually Very Good Reasons why I'll go away from what I know.

So what has drawn the ire this time ?

Tis the anti-virus software ...

Kaspersky have an excellent reputation that's up there with the Norton's and McAfee's of the application world. But ... there comes a time when a reputation isn't enough, especially when the user (and buyer) starts thinking that the company is trading on their reputation instead of Quality Product. In the case of Kaspersky, there is a long list of sins ... They start with the 2009 AV product and magnify with the 2010 IS product.

I run 2 PCs at home, a desktop that's fitted for gaming and a laptop that I use for occasional gaming (like when I've forgotten to do something unambitious) but mostly for music and network stuff. Both need antivirus because I use internet browsers on them. I ask only a few things of my antivirus :

No firewall - it just gets in the way and interferes
(there's a firewall on my router)
Minimal performance impact
No weirdness*
Adequate detection rates
Must not IRRITATE

Detection rates are the most key feature. I had an incident at the start of this year where my Eve login details got stolen by a keystroke logger, with McAfee being the one on watch at the time. If your AV doesn't spot the Nasties, what's the point of it ?

No Firewall comes in with the No Weirdness. A domestic internet security programme typically doesn't need a firewall, as that service is being done by the router that connects to the internet. I.e. hacking attempts are stopped before they get to the firewall in the machine. For anything that slips through, the firewall built into Windows (or other OS) is perfectly adequate.

Even worse than no firewall is a botched firewall, which is what I got with Kaspersky 2010IS. With several computers in a house, it's very useful to have them connected together on a network. For this to work properly and the machines to see each other, there needs to be nothing getting in the way of Windows sorting itself out. This is where the issue with Kaspersky was happening, it was tagging new networks as "Public" without prompting.

What's that mean ? You can connect to other machines (if lucky) but other machines cannot connect to you. And because there's no prompting, the poor hapless user has no clue whatsoever as to where the problem is. That is, unless they apply Machine Logic and get lucky.

This comes after their 2009AV software being responsible for weird minicrashes on my desktop. Think 10secs fine, 1 sec stop and repeat that. Highly irritating and it cleared as soon as I switched from 2009AV to 2010IS. And there was also startup instability on my laptop, where turning the power on didn't necessarily mean a usable laptop after it settled down. Since switching across to Avira, the laptop has been far more stable and smoother. There's that "Minimal performance impact" thing - Internet Security products tend to do too much and slow things down.

They had an awesome reputation but I feel that it's burned itself out due to too much keeping up with the competition. Just because everyone else is doing something doesn't make it a good idea.

The latest sin is a popup ... "Re register or lose protection". It'll wait until the machine's been idle for 5 minutes and then when the mouse is twitched, the popup will come back. That's just plain rude.

So - it's away from Kaspersky now as they've finally burned out all their goodwill. Now it's Avira, which has already detected 2 threats (leftover from Kaspersky) in the first scan.