AntiVirus Reviews?

I can't find timely or even common Anti-Virus Reviews.

They used to be more common, more timely. In years past, it seemed there were dozens of sites offering tests and reviews, almost on a monthly basis, and certainly quarterly. Then, of course, there was the issue of validity, consumer trusting of those reviews, etc, but the sheer quantity of reviews gave credence to some products.

In the past year, however, I see fewer and fewer websites offering AV tests. Perhaps the perception of "everyone's doing it" led more and more reviewers to stop their own efforts?

Do you have a set of favorite AV review sites?

On a side note, a good many reviews seldom listed the useful feature of "Product offers downloadable ISO for a boot-up scan process." I greatly prefer the products that offer this, most of whom seem to do at least a monthly update of their ISO file. (It's not that I believe every Virus will be cured, but I am still old-school enough to believe that pre-boot 'cures' offer some cures that post-boot fixes can't.)

 

I am uncertain of the years I consider "the height of AV reviews" - was it 2008-2010? Something like that. It seemed like every geeky website would have at least a quarterly review of AVs, and often they'd segregate them from Free vs Free and then offer Pay vs Pay reviews.

I started noticing the lack of such reviews this past year. I still don't know why these reviews have dropped off. Was it because most products were doing such an good job that "most are adequate"? Could be. And truly, when reviews would list Top 2 and Bottom 8, another review would list the same 10 but in different orders.

I thought this was a consumer's dream come true - "Look at the test methods, and determine which one more closely follows an individual's actual usage."

I haven't seen too many virus attacks in the last 4 years that weren't "hijacker" related, and this goes back to User Discipline. "If a user is conned into clicking on a fake warning, then he's invited the monster into his computer and there's not much hope from there."

Truly - giving User Rights to these hijackers usually includes dismantling AV services first.

But we've got this CryptoLocker crap going, too, which seems to be beyond a mere 'hijacker' con-job.