Anyone heard of Kaspersky Anti-virus

[Redoverfarm]

The wife picked up the son a netbook and they threw in 6 months of this anti-virus.  Has anyone ever heard of it or would it be worthwhile to get something else

[MountainDon]

It works. Microsoft also a a very good anti-virus program and it is free. Google Microsoft Security Essentials. It's been well tested by the folks at Windows Secrets and it never failed to find something that was also found by other software that costs money.

[HoustonDave]

Kaspersky is very well regarded among computer network geeks.  My company uses it and it has been very effective at catching threats.  

From Wikipedia:

Eugene Kaspersky (who founded the company with his now ex wife) graduated from the Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications and Computer Science, an institute co-sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Defense and the KGB in 1987. Kaspersky then worked at a multi-discipline scientific research institute until 1991. While there, the Cascade virus was detected on his computer, which increased Kaspersky's interest in information security and led to his studying the field of computer virology from 1989. Kaspersky joined the KAMI Information Technologies Center in 1991, where he and his associates developed the AVP anti-virus product. In 1997, he co-founded Kaspersky Lab, which was later run for a decade by his ex-wife Natalya Kaspersky. In November 2000, AVP was renamed 'Kaspersky Anti-Virus' after a dispute with a US partner. In 2007, Eugene was named the CEO of Kaspersky Labs. In June 12 2009 he received the Russian State Award from president Medvedev for improving state security. In the same year, he received the People's Republic of China Friendship Award.

Oh and yes, I do wonder sometimes about the wisdom of having an antivirus program from a company with ties to Russian intellience....my IT friends assure me I'm just paranoid...

[glenn kangiser]

I'd be more worried about an anti-virus with ties to US intelligence....but they have all of our operating systems wired with back doors anyway....



I use AVG free and it has been great also - no problems, and it in fact found a trojan Mozilla app a couple days ago.  Someone tried to load it on my computer as I did not voluntarily do it -- another search toolbar that I did not order..... AVG blocked it.

[waggin]

Kaspersky was highly recommended by an IT friend, so I'm using it on my recently purchased laptop.  I have the free version of AVG on my older desktop.  Both seem to do the trick so far.

[ChuckinVa]

I use AVG also and have had 0 problems so far.

[IronRanger]

In the past, Kaspersky was resource heavy.  It uses a lot of RAM.

I use the free version of AVG.

Another must-have program is spywareblaster.  It's free too (donations accepted).

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Of course, there's also Ad-Aware and Spybot too.

[Pox Eclipse]

Kaspersky rates high in head to head tests of antivirus software.  Among free antivirus programs, I use to recommend AVG, but since they came out with AVG 2011, it seems to makes computers run slower.  Some of my clients had problems after installation, and the desktop would no longer launch.  Since then, I have been recommending Microsoft Security Essentials as a free alternative.  It is very efficient at catching intruders, and it doesn't use as much RAM as some of the others.

[OkieJohn2]

I used to use AVG till that fatefull day.....in one update, they wrongly identified part of the Windows OS as a virus....had to fresh install. Part of it was my fault, I took the easy way out and had it set up to automatically fix problems. 
I have since switched to Avira, and am quite pleased with it.  Some people don't like it because once a day, when it updates, you get a pop up window wanting you to buy the full version, one click and the ad is gone, but it does annoy some people.
http://download.cnet.com/Avira-AntiVir-Personal-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10322935.html?tag=mncol
I also like downloading from CNET/download.com.  Lots of free goodies there.

[Tickhill]

I use WebRoot, I believe Sophos does their AV definitions. We used WebRoot where I work.