This review is about ESET Smart Security 4 an all in one security package and ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4, since it is the same as ESET Smart Security 4, except that it is missing the firewall and a few small other things.  I have been using NOD32 for awhile, just the anti-virus part of it, since they had no firewall back then, and it was always considered one of the anti-virus programs that used the less resources on a computer and had the highest detection ratings.  I always had a few doubts of NOD32 though comparing it to Norton, seeing as how would a small little program be such a great anti-virus program and Norton had to use all those resources to actually catch things and run background scans.  Norton’s 2009 product line and 2010 product line now focuses on resource usage, this is a big issue with security products, if it slows down your computer you are more likely to get angry and turn it off leaving you open to attacks. 

ESET Smart Security 4 has been the first time I have tried out NOD32′s firewall and I have to say its pretty good, and a the same time very silent.  I tend to like firewalls that talk to me, I really liked Zone alarm in its early days before being bought out because of this, but this one is a silent firewall, you always wonder if it’s doing its job.  But at the same time I rarely get attacked anymore, most of the time when a firewall detects an attack it is just background Internet noise, nothing specifically sent to your computer just scans done in the wild and what blocks most of these attacks is if you have a router, it automatically will keep your firewall very silent.  That is why I recommend getting a router as I stated before and a firewall as a backup.  I also have to say that AVG is a pretty good anti-virus program and you will likely be safe with it, but the problem with it is you have to pay to get AVG’s complete security suite that includes the firewall and email spam filters, etc, and AVG’s paid security suite isn’t that good.  ESET updates daily its virus definitions.

ESET Anti-virus has one of the best dedication of all in the wild viruses in the VB test sets without any false-alarms from my 1998 to 2009 with 57, Norton 50, Mcafee 40, Trend 16, and Kaspersky 47 from a VirusBulletin.com test an independent virus testing that is done to check the performance of anti-virus software.  The clear winner here is NOD32 Anti-Virus

Missed in the wild viruses in Virus Bulletin Tests between May 1998 and August 2009, Nod32: On-Access 0, On-Demand 0, Norton: On-Access 31, On-Demand 4, Mcafee: On-Access 71, On-Demand 72, Trend: On-Access 73, On-Demand 69, and Kaspersky: On-Access 35 On-Demand 15.  As you can see NOD32 beats all these other anti-viruses in detection of in the wild viruses that are real viruses that have been reported to the wildlist organization by at least two independent reporters.

Fast boot time of the anti-virus does not slow down boot-time has much as other’s for example NOD32 boots up in 12% which is 157 seconds  time and Norton that has really improved its resource usage boots up in 26%  229 seconds of the time.

Full charts, comparisons, and tests can be found at http://www.virusbtn.com/index or http://www.eset.com/products/compare-NOD32-vs-competition.php

Here are a few charts showing the results of NOD32 anti-virus detection against other anti-virus programs:

So as you can see why I would choose ESET Smart Security 4 as my security software, I never get any viruses and If I do they are picked up right away and I am safer on the Internet.  The problem with ESET NOD32 is that lots of people haven’t heard of it, most people know the big  names such as Norton and Mcafee, which you can see on the tests that they are not that great at detecting viruses and also they use lots of resources and slow your computer down, Norton has fixed this problem drastically in its new program.   So if you want to be safe online and want more protection than AVG and want a firewall and spam protection get ESET Smart Security 4 at http://www.eset.com/ and they have a free 30 day trial to test it out at http://www.eset.com/download/free_trial_download_ess.php

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