TJP

Skim read but it appears ESS did rather well. Usual test champions did well.I can't believe how many AV's use Bitdefender's engine...

Decent showing by Eset and I'm glad to see a breakdown of the performance criteria. I would love to see ESS increase in performance to match KIS and NIS.

Indeed you do get what you pay for. Nod32 in my humble opinion is the 'basic' program - an anti-virus without much need for fettling! The performance:protection ratio is pretty damn solid out of the box too. ESS has many more aspects for the end user to play with, should they choose to do so, and can cause the inexperienced a few headaches if not careful. The option is there to 'set and forget' too. I think ronxp2000 raises an interesting point as more AV companies move to offering freebie software however I don't see the need for Eset to offer freebies. With freebies all I see are endless promotions and cut-price upgrade adverts popping up all the time. I installed a paid-for internet security suite from a well known freebie AV company (starting with an 'A') and that too has upgrade adverts plasted on the main UI page

A test is simply a snapshot in time. I've seen Wilder's posters change their AV on a daily basis based off a single test or some other whim. Good for Avast! customers/fans that it out performed Eset's offerings in one test; same for BitDefender and Kaspersky Labs customers too. I don't care about Eset's 'score' given it protects me just fine and causes zero issues and zero lag on my PC. AV-Test has always thrown up some interesting results for Eset products, specifically in the performance area. A lot of these tests aren't worth worrying about given that (a) many vendors have specific departments dedicated to getting the highest detection scores possible within tests - which has little correlation to real world situations (b) several AV vendors have been caught manipulating their own software to try and obtain the highest detection scores possible and © many of the AV vendors and testing organisations appear (to an outsider such as myself) as having very close relationships e.g test sponsorships. In the end it's largely left to the individual to try various AV products and hope they find one that suits them best. I found that in ESS after years of KIS.

Solid showing by Eset but nothing spectacular. I finally experienced what *may* AV-Test have witnessed in a performance slowdown - copying the unzipped DDU onto a USB drive took an age as ESS scanned each file before copying onto the drive. Interesting reading Wilder's Security Forums as one of the current test darlings causing mayhem on people's PC's with constant performance issues (AKA slowdowns). It's exactly what I had when I tried the same software.

Kaspersky and Bitdefender tied again, so KL get the gong over Bitdefender as they won it last year. Solid showing by Eset once more although as always there are areas to improve upon! ESS remains one of the few IS suites without a shedload of bloated, unless clean up utilities or web based admin tools.

Another AV Test - another poor result for the impact score. Protection: 5.5/6.0 Resource: 3.5/6.0 Usability: 6.0/6.0 Change the resource usage - an ongoing problem in just the AV Test reviews - to a 5.5 or 6.0 and the results table looks very different. It remains a mystery how a few years ago AV-C gave Eset an award for lowest PC resource usage when in the same period AV-T stated time and again resource usage for Eset products was high. Another mystery is why Eset bother with AV-T or at least why they don't work out why their products continue to record such poor resource usage scores.

Interesting results; I would have thought Eset was as 'light' as anything from KL. I've tried Avast, Kaspersky and Bit Defender in the last 2 months and all have caused issues from system locks and slowdowns to slow file browsing. I guess I must be unlucky with my vanilla build of Windows 10 x64 when using other AV software.

Very true however MS aren't giving legitimate Windows 7 & 8.1 customers an upgrade to Windows 10 for charitable reasons; we become the product when we upgrade in very nearly the same way AVG is doing.

Kaspersky Labs through Eugene stated they have a team dedicated to passing AV tests and likely the same for many AV vendors. Marketing and public perception wins out.

Which is why MS are giving away Windows 10 licences

So...are these tests really 'real world' given many of the AV companies have teams dedicated to passing these tests with the highest detection rates.

Summary: ESET provides a comprehensive security product, which impressed us with its well implemented features

I've used G2A for gaming software and found the experience was fine. That said, they have been associated with selling Russian product keys as well as trading in Humble Bundle keys and stolen keys (if one believes Ubisoft, EA etc). I believe Steam don't have anything to do with G2A keys (as in, if it the CD key doesn't work or is black listed, tough luck). If it smells rank, leave it alone. To me, a 3 month product key is a promotional key that's being re-sold.

Eugine Kaspersky's response to the article: https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2015/08/14/the-abracadabra-of-anonymous-sources/ A developer's response to the accusation of 'fake' virus definitions cooked up by KL: hxxp://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/reuters-russian-antivirus-firm-faked-malware-to-harm-rivals.378843/page-3#post-2516740

That is disappointing but understandable if version 9's release is very soon.

I have the same issue using ESS version 8.0.319.0 using Win 8.1 Professional; the issue doesn't exist with the ESS Beta 9.0.117.0.

There is also this quote from VB: "ESET’s VB100 record remains unrivalled, with an unbroken string of passes stretching back into the mists of time. The company’s latest edition has the usual slick and professional feel, with a stark, minimalist layout on the main screen but the expected wealth of fine-tuning options readily available. Stability was once again impeccable with no problems observed at all, but performance impact was a little high with our set of tasks slowed down noticeably. Detection was solid across the board, and with yet another clean run over the certification sets, ESET’s epic record of passes continues to build." More here: https://www.virusbtn.com/virusbulletin/archive/2015/04/vb201504-comparative#id4310008

Parental control part of ESS and I don't see a stand alone version for sale on eset.com - hxxp://www.eset.com/int/download/home/

It's the same story test after test from this testing organisation. AV-C gives ESS a high score for performance (as in ESS barely affects performance) and AV-T consistently give ESS a poor score for performance. As I see it, one large problem is the AV-T is one test that is used by a variety of publications online and print.

Full list here: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-8/june-2015/ ESS results: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-8/june-2015/eset-smart-security-8.0-152390/ Protection: 5.0/6.0 Performance 3.0/6.0 Usability: 6.0/6.0 One day we might get an answer for the poor performance score It does affect the real-world perception of Eset.

Good to know it's finally been sorted. Thanks Planet

Another test from AV-C which you can view here: hxxp://www.av-comparatives.org/performance-tests/ Bar graph is here: hxxp://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php?chart=chart4&year=2015&month=5&sort=1 Please read the pdf report to understand the scores. It seems Eset need to do better on uninstallation of programs.

After coming back to Eset from Kaspersky, whom with I never had a single issue renewing their products from licence sellers all over the internet. Perhaps I should have stuck with the wealthy Russian I don't understand how renewing is even an issue in this day and age; my licence should be good as a trigger for a renewal discount irrespective of whomever I chose to shop with be it Eset Australia or one of their partners. Do we have to email Eset Australia with our licence info in order to renew with them or will they simply point us back to Microbe? I too never received a single e-mail from Pro1 or Microbe about the merger until recently (which is a EOFY discount code).

I presume Eset don't bother with getting to the bottom of the performance scores with AV-Test? I think it's still funny that two AV testing firms find the same product performs vastly different.