NOD32 Antivirus Review

Summary

NOD32 has been lately getting attention and surfacing on various ‘top 10′ lists, this has been due to NOD32′s success in doing what an antivirus is supposed to, protect you from viruses.

Review Details

Company – ESET
Operating System – XP
Version – 3.0.6

Application Ratings

Interface – 10/10
Ease of use – 10/10
Memory Usage – 6/10
Popularity – 8/10
Price(~$40.00) – 8/10
Speed – 5/10
Virus detection rate – 7/10
Help and Support – 10/10

Review

Interface – 10/10

NOD32 is packaged with a simple, minimalist interface. Using light shades of generic skin colors of a green, blue and white combination. The interface is available in 2 modes, standard and advanced. This provides more options and functionality and maybe switched based on how savvy the user is. The advanced mode has an additional ‘Tools’ section to configure more specific options.

Ease of use – 10/10

Like most antivirus programs NOd32 is very straight forward with an easy to use self explanatory interface. The different standard and advanced mode explained above makes it more suited towards an overall audience, users with better technical know how may toggle the advanced mode while the layman computer user may stick with the standard version which is sufficient to keep the application running. All the various features within the application are appended with tool-tip text as well so figuring the functions of the software is a breeze. Installation and initial settings are also quite straight forward.

Memory Usage – 6/10

On standby, NOD32 does great with memory usage, takes a tad of time to startup but it’s nothing to get frustrated about as the flash screen shows up and instantly the application is loaded and sits on the system tray. The 6 point score results from the heavy CPU usage during a scan, multi tasking maybe possible depending on the simultaneous task(s) you plan on performing, however to support this negative factor, it offers pausing of the scan so if you need to urgently run a task while a scan is in progress you may pause it and continue afterwards.

Popularity – 8/10

As I stated in the summary, NOD32 has gained popularity over recent times successfully competing with several of its counterparts. While it’s still can’t compete in terms of popularity with some of the old boys like McAfee or Norton, it should eventually grab more market share as I could safely say it’s better than some of the more popular antivirus programs around.

Price(~$40.00) – 8/10

NOD32 costs $40 for an individual 1 year license, this price is highly competitive and quite similar to most of the other antivirus programs in the market.

Speed – 5/10

NOD32 takes forever to perform a full scan, while this is common in many antivirus programs, it’s one of the main issues that need to be addressed with in the antivirus/antispyware market, some of the antivirus software like Kaspersky handle this well though. A full scan on NOD32 takes several hours to complete.

Virus detection rate – 7/10

NOD32 has quite a satisfactory detection rate however I’ve noticed that it’s not the most secure funnel in terms of filtering viruses. It does have a relatively high detection rate compared to other market leaders like AVG however there is indeed room for improvement.

Help and Support – 10/10

NOD32 provides a wealth of documented support on all aspects of the program. They have an offline manual as well as an Internet database, they also provide customer care by email in case they missed any doubt you might have in their compiled documentation.

Overall (8/10)

Looking at the application as a whole, it’s a very good option for an antivirus software, from its simplicity to the detection rate and also the manageable memory usage. While there are aspects as highlighted above that has room for improvement it’s a solid antivirus program that is probably worth the price.

NOD32 Antivirus Website

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