ESET Nod32

ESET Nod32

TopTenREVIEWS - Bronze Award - Awarded for excellence in design, useability and feature set

ESET NOD32 Antivirus is a simple program with advanced features. The easy to use interface is a significant improvement over the previous version of NOD32 Antivirus. The menu is more aesthetically pleasing while providing a much needed facelift to the ease of configuration within the program.

While the scanning features were not completely changed like the interface, they are faster and more effective in this new version of NOD32 Antivirus. The included scanning features were sped up considerably to help make this a definite milestone in the development of ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

Ease of Use:

ESET NOD32 Antivirus is a changed product. The base features are extremely simple and easy to use while still being effective. The redesigned interface includes a menu on the left with sub options on the right. Several options exist in the sub options to assist in "drilling down" to what you wish to do.

There is little or no base configuration needed to get the NOD32 Antivirus working after install. If you do require custom configurations though, you have a simple advanced configuration menu that gives you all the options needed to customize NOD32 to your specific needs.

Effectiveness:
ESET NOD32 Antivirus is very effective in detecting and cleaning viruses from your computer. The on-demand scanner is fast and effective while still allowing you to do other things on your computer during the scan. The on-access scanner is almost behind the scenes compared to many other options out there. The only time you will notice what it is doing is when it detects a threat.


Updates:

The standard update cycle for ESET NOD32 Antivirus is once a day if needed. They have the ability to "push" updates if there is a significant threat though.

Their response times for new threats are very fast ranging from 1 to 4 hours depending on the threat.

Feature Set:

Included with ESET NOD32 Antivirus are several layers of protection. Antivirus scanning includes integrated real time email protection, web access protection as well as a rootkit scanner and a spyware scanner. All of these features are included and integrated into the on demand scanner. The email protection included with NOD32 integrates directly with MS Outlook and any standard POP3 email client. It surprisingly doesn't include IMAP scanning. This shouldn't be an issue for most people though since POP3 is by far the most used email protocol in use today for local email clients.

Also included to make this version of NOD32 Antivirus much more effective is the ThreatSense engine. ThreatSense is a system developed by ESET to help identify new and evolving threats and provide faster responses to those threats. Through a service called ThreatSense.Net, ESET is able to give you feedback on how to protect yourself from any threats that may just be propegating themselves on the net.

Ease of Installation:
Installing NOD32 Antivirus is very simple and posed no problems for us. The install took less than 5 minutes and required a quick restart of the testing computer.


Help/Support:
NOD32 Antivirus includes several support options included with your subscription. Included with these options are email support, a well stocked knowledge base and FAQ, as well as phone support available from 6AM-6PM Pacific time.


Summary:

In years past, ESET NOD32 Antivirus has always been praised on the detection ability it brought to the table. Regardless of its abilities to keep your computer safe, it was considered by some to be difficult to use. The new 3.0 version has changed the way customers interact with ESET NOD32 Antivirus. The menu's have all been streamlined to make common functions more easily accessible while keeping the same efficiency that was associated with the older versions.