Security → KAV 4.5 Personal Pro or KAV 5.0 Personal Pro

I am seriously considering installing KAV on my main system. I tried out KAV Personal 5.0 on a Windows 98 SE Athlon XP 2400+ test system with only 96 megabytes available RAM. I thought the program ran great, I liked the interface, and I could find no fault.

I have setup files for both Personal Pro 4.5 and Personal Pro 5.0 but have not purchased a key. Questions for you KAV experts:

Will the key work with either program?

I will be using the program with Windows XP Professional SP2 and 1 GB RAM. So I'd like a concise explanation of the controversy over KAV 5.0's use of ADS tags. I read little about it lately. Did this issue resolve itself?

I know there's some polarization among you regarding the pro versions of KAV 4.5 and KAV 5.0. I'd like to hear your recommendations which one to pay for.

What is your opinion of Kaspersky support?

I don't think it will.

Cudni

I think it will, because you don't buy a key for a specific product (e.g. KAV 4.5 or KAV 5.0). You buy a key for KAV PRO versions, which can be used in all KAV PRO versions as long as your key is valid (usually 1 year).

Their support is great. This is one reason why I decided to give KAV a try about one year ago (Personal version). I haven't looked back...

Look as if the direct link to my blog post may have gotten taken out of this post. Not sure why - but that matters not I guess. My opinion on the Pro 5.0 can be found here
»Kaspersky Personal PRO v5.0 released!!! I'd stick with personal at this time honestly. Pro in my opinion has a few things needing tweaked. If you have a low amount of RAM in your machine. I honestly don't think Pro is the best option at this time.

I don't believe in using older builds of security products. But many users are still using 4.5 builds with no issues.

This argument might be valid generally but not in case of KAV.
I'm using v.3.5.133 on my old PC (working like a charm on a Pentium III/w2k) and can assure you that it has the same detection rate like v.5.0.xxx.
The main advantages of the elder PROs are:
- custom installation
- custom tuning of the scanner and the RTM

RAM is not a problem as my main system has 1 GB. Do you still think Personal would be better than Pro at this point?

From my experience - yes. Others seem to be reporting similar experiences. My experience normally doesn't mirror other users. When others see issues. I normally see smooth sailing. Not the case with KAV Pro. I mentioned this in the Kaspersky forum and in a really long blog post. So my opinion is give Kaspersky time to get a new build out.

There are several things that should be in pro that aren't. There are in my opinion ( and others ) ease of use issues. And you can only currently use regular databases with pro. Extremely odd. I covered my experience in detail in my blog post.

If your feeling lucky. Give the 5.0 Pro trial a spin. Maybe your experience will be different than mine. You definitely have more RAM. This machine only runs 256. You could also go with pro 4.5 until 5.0 smooths out. Or if you like the layout and interface of 5.0. Stick with personal for now.

It's rare I don't recommend upgrading to the latest build. But the 5.0 pro didn't sit well with me for multiple reasons. Your mileage may vary. Several good threads in the »Security Product Vendors forum and the Kaspersky forum.

Google search Kaspersky help for that forum ( if you've not been there before ) and other helpful links.

When KAV 5 Personal Pro was released, I removed my 4.5 Pro, and installed the new program.

Since I KAV Pro key was still valid, it worked out just fine.

Really like KAV Personal Pro 5.0, and yes, I turned the streams option to "Off."

Hi,

I recently switched from NAV because I felt to many little things were filtering through and I grew a little uncomfortable with their once a week update program.

I tried out McAfee (nice but also once a week), NOD32 (which I am considering purchasing as a backup scanner), and KAV 4.5.104 Pro (Personal does not appear to be available anymore for this version), 5.0 Personal, and 5.0 Pro.

First, in regards to support. During my evaluation I sent several emails to KAV regarding the questions I had concerning 4.5 and 5.0 and 5.0 Personal and Pro. I never received one reply to any of my emails. This I consider to be very poor because we are talking about pre-sales.

However, I was not totally turned off to KAV, since I don't get any better support from McAfee or Norton. However, I do get excellent support for KAV on this forum and Wilders which is enough. Plus, during my evaluation, I found that ICE Systems (a reseller) was excellent. I would normally get responses to my questions withing minutes! Quite a difference. So if you decide to purchase, you may want to look at ICE Systems. They definitely try to help out.

Both versions of 5.0 played havoc on my system. There were just to many crashes and incompatibilities with the other programs that I was running in the background. I cannot remember what I was running during the evaluation, but right now I am running BOClean, Ewido, ZoneAlarm, Prevx, and Giant Anti-Spy. I run SSM once in a while, but that too is pretty unstable right now. This may be overkill, but I have been hit several times during the last year and my system seems to be more resistent with this setup. I will also be evaluating ProcessGuard 3.0 when it comes out.

KAV 4.5.104 Pro has been running flawlessly on my machine. It has installation configurablity tha that 5.0 Personal does not have. Also, it does not use ADS. ADS was a real problem for me when I ran TDS-3 scans with ADS scanning enabled. TDS-3 was reporting every file with the Kavich stream. I had to set TDS-3 to ignore and ADS with Kavich. I felt that this left a "hole" in TDS-3 checking that could be exploited. Not sure if this is something to be concerned about, but I sure didn't like it, especially since 5.0 was not giving me anything (other than troubles) that I couldn't get with 4.5.104.

So I am very happy with 4.5.104. The frequent updates and the xtended databases, I feel, do a good job of covering me. I will upgrade to 5.0 Pro when it is very well tested and some of the issues regarding ADS configurability have been addressed. Personally, I found no real reason to install it on my system at this time.

Hope this helps,

Rich