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When you give away good service for free, you tend to become popular, very popular. With over 122 million active users worldwide, avast!'s antivirus software is a perfect example. EseT Node 32! boasts some features that used to be present only in the current eddition, Its users must be happy; according to the company, two-thirds of all new installations are referrals from existing users.
The last time ESET updated its two security suites--the antivirus and anti-malware-only NOD32 and the more feature-heavy alternative Smart Security--it was a different computer security world. It was March 2009: Anonymous barely existed, Stuxnet hadn't gone public, and ransomware was the stuff of science fiction.
Version 5 of ESET NOD32 is a admirable, creative attempt to create a suite that accommodates to a fast changing threatscape, with an attention on generic detections and the now-commonplace assurance on both cloud and locally stored detections. Where NOD32's bigger brother Smart Security 5 left us wanting more in the ancillary features department, the area that many don't consider "core" security, NOD32 strikes a perfect features, price, and effectiveness.
When it comes to antivirus protection, ESET has had a great reputation for quite some time, and they've made good improvements in this version, especially in their real-time web-filtering. However, its virus removal capabilities could still use some work.
The HIPS (host intrusion protections system) is a nice feature and is designed to notify you of potentially unauthorized changes to your system. Unfortunately, its implementation will likely annoy most users into turning it off.
With those problems out of the way, testing went quickly. An in-depth scan of the hard drive and operating memory on my standard clean test system finished in 13 minutes. That's faster than Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Free 1.51 (Free, 4 stars) (14 minutes) and AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012 (Free, 4 stars) (16 minutes). However, a repeat scan with AVG took less than two minutes.
On finishing a scan, ESET reports statistics on what it did. You can click a link for the full scan log, but most users will find it much too detailed. I'd prefer a simple list of threats found, with the individual file and Registry traces hidden by default.
ESET detect 88 percent of the threats, the same as AVG, and scored 6.5 points for malware removal, also the same as AVG. Norton AntiVirus 2012 ($39.99 direct, 4.5 stars) had a slightly lower detection rate, but better cleanup earned it the top removal score of 7.1 points.
Like many of the current antivirus products, ESET detected 100 percent of the scareware (rogue antivirus) samples and scored 9.5 points for scareware removal. Norton and Malwarebytes both managed a perfect 10 on the scareware test.
Quite a few products tested with the current sample set also detected 100 percent of the threats that use rootkit technology. ESET detected 88 percent and scored a so-so 5.3 points for rootkit removal. For an explanation of how I boil down a product's behavior into a malware removal score see How We Test Malware Removal.
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