Spyware Warrior

[mallen1]

Regarding the plethora of available antimalware utilities, I have three interrelated questions regarding their real-time protection:

1. which utility's real-time protection provides the most bulletproof security,
2. which is utility's real-time protection is easiest on CPU utilization, and
3. which strikes the best balance between protection and resource utilization?

I realize that especially #3 is quite subjective, but that's what I want: your opinions.
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HARDWARE
CoolerMaster WaveMaster TAC-T01 Mid-Tower, Intel D975XBX2KR Bad Axe 2 Mobo, Intel® Core™2 Quad 2.4GHz Q6600 Processor, Corsair 4GB [2(2 x 1GB kit)] 5300 DDR2 SDRAM, eVGA e-GeForce 8800GT AKIMBO 512MB SC, Hauppauge HVR-1600, PreSonus Firebox Firewire audio interface/sound card recording system, 4 Seagate 320GB 7200.10 16MB cache HDDs. Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1TB External Backup.

[roger_m]

1 Kaspersky Internet Security provides very good protection, but maybe someone else can offer other suggestions.

2 I would have to say the ESET's NOD32 and ESET Smart Security are the best in this regard. Also they have excellent detection rates.

3 Maybe someone else can answer this. Both of ESET's products offer very good protection against known malware, and some protection agains unkown malware due to excellent heuristics (attempts to identify unknown threats), but do not not provide any kind of HIPS.

HIPS put simply will alert you and ask for your approval when any unkown process tries to do something on your computer. Vista offers this in a limited from with User Account Control.