Small Footprint AV

Hi

Other than NOD32 and AVG, which other's that you would reccomend have a very small footprint and use very little resources?

 

Hi Pan

Of the AV programs I have used in the last year or so, 3 stand out as having a very small memory footprint and therefore virtually no effect on system resources.

1. Kaspersky's AVP v.3.5 which is still available for download on their swiss site.

2. Dr Web.

3. F-Prot for Windows.

All of these programs used only between 1-3mB memory when installed on my machines and had no visible effects on my systems. Even on low spec computers - Pentium 2, 192mB Ram.

These are all retail software, with F-Prot being the cheapest of the three and all have a good reputation in virus detection.

If you are looking for free programs, Avast has a number of followers but there is some dispute as to whether it is resource hungry or not. I cannot comment on this one!

Overall wait until you receive more recommendations here, then trial at least 2-3 of them, one at a time, and see which ones you like and which are compatible with your system and programs.

Don't forget to disable/uninstall any present AV program on your computer before trying a new one.

Wait for some more advice then begin your trials. Good Luck.

 

Thx for the replies.

What's the URL of the swiss site for KAV 3.5, and is the detection engine thingie the same in 3.5 as it is in later versions.

Also I believe there is a KAV Lite, I assume that is meant to have a smaller footprint?

I have also hear that Sophos is good and has a small footptint? True?

 

Found it - http://www.kav.ch/

 

I find KAV lite is great. (win98 128ram) It flows well on my machine . I just use the one antivirus programme though . It offers the same protection as the 3.5 and 4 versions but is only $20. I also found that running a full scan disk and defrag etc keeps the programmes flowing better that I regularly use. I like the 3.5 also but now just use my lite.

 

If you're looking for an av with a small footprint, you might want to consider CA's etrust ez antivirus 6x. It weighs in below 8 mb, has an integrated, simple to use window explorer style menu. It supports different types of archived files and its scan engine is one of the fastest out there. More importantly if you consider outside tests as a criteria, it has been certified by ICSA and Westcoast Checkmark labs.

It's safe to assume that it uses the same scan engine as Computer Associates etrust antivirus line for managed enterprise solutions.