A Look At The Competition and Some Questions?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

We all know about how great Avast is for many, many years for its frequency of updates, deep heuristics scanning, customizable scanning options, the Boot Time Scan availability, which no other free versions have AFAIK, and the new Sandbox virutualized environment, now available in Avast 6 Free!

My question is, how do the other Anti-Virus companies such as Norton, AVG, McAfee, and MSE-(Microsoft Security Essentials) deal with updates and scanning? And what Anti-Virus programs did you have before Avast?

Here is my story.

Years ago, when I had my first computer, I had a demo version of McAfee, (back in 1998, running Windows 98.) I did not know anything about Anti-Virus software, and somehow McAfee got corrupted and my system would hang on boot-up. I uninstalled it and for years had no Anti-Virus on the machine!

I can’t remember what I first went to, it might have been AVG 7. At the time, AVG 7 was pretty good and not the bloated mess it became with AVG 8 on up. I recall putting some other security stuff on the computer, I think Spybot Search and Destroy and the shield program, Spyware Blaster. A full scan and cleaning found over 650 malware and Trojans!!!

Eventually the computer died due to age and and the infections on it. In about 2004, I got My Gateway with Windows XP, (same system I use today) Six years later, completely reformatted and cleaned going through trial and error before the clean up with a demo version of Norton. (Always caused slow shutdowns) Over the years, I knew that AVG when they went to version 8 was a resource hog, and everything above it. So, following adding RAM to the computer, cleaning the keyboard and tower case, reformatting the hard drive, the ONLY security software that I have is now the best there is, Avast and Malware Bytes Anti-Malware and Web of Trust. I have had no infections. since March of 2005 with this small, but simple combination of services and the machine runs very, very well. Also a secured router for my wireless network.

2

I first got on line back in 1999. I started out with v4 something of McAfee’s AV and was satisfied with it and the following v5. When v6 came out, I paid to download it and could never get it to work right. I was in constant email and live chat with their support trying to fix the problem and they kept assuring me they would find the problem and make it work. Then one day they said they could not find out what was going on and could offer me no more assistance so I then asked for a refund. They told me that the refund period for downloaded software was 30 days and I was past that so they couldn’t help me there either. This again , was after constant contact and them assuring me they would fix it. I immediately switched to Norton and once I did , wondered why I hadn’t used it from the beginning. It was so much better than McAfee. I stayed with Norton from 2001 to 2009, going from just the AV to the full Internet Security Suite in 2005 and upgrading every successive year. I was always pleased with Norton and never had a single problem, slowdown, or infection. In 2009, I decided to see what level of protection I could get for free and switched to Comodo Internet Security. After a year of dealing with the annoying HIPS popups for safe and necessary actions, and then the horrible sandbox they introduced, I grew disenchanted with their approach and switched to the free Avast! in May of 2010. I’m not sorry I did. Avast! is the best in my opinion.

On the Vista machine here we first tried MSE and it worked fairly good but had times when it didn’t update for days at a time. They told us it really didn’t matter unless you were out of date by more than a week. What a joke. What made us give up on MSE and put Avast! on that machine as well was what happened both times MSE put out an update to the program itself. On both occasions, the upgrade aborted in the middle after partially uninstalling the old version leaving the machine with no protection whatsoever until I could manually complete the uninstallation of the old version and remove all the left over registry entries and other things. Then and only then was I able to download and install the updated version. Avast! has now been upgraded through the program gui 2 or 3 times on that same machine with no problems whatsoever.

3

Well on my side I was using Quick Heal Total Security on my pc starting from XP pro. I never had a problem with that but just one that is its too costly which I can not afford. It has the best virus detection till now. But it lacks in other aspects like sandbox it does not have, Rest every thing is there a very simple to use interface and every thing Quick heal has is just the best.
I know many of you may not have heard about Quick Heal. So as I cannot afford it so i was searching for a AV which is free and I got avast as highly rated though I don’t like its interface as I do for Quick Heal Total Security 2010 or 2011 but a minor compromise is good as they (avast people) told me that they are going to keep this interface and there will not be any change. But still ok as long as I can’t afford Quick Heal as I m currently not working

4

Nobody else has a story???

5

Yeah, I have a story - about Symantec’s “enterprise” line of products. >:( :-X

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yes me too >>> http://ivyjoy.com/fables/

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@ Jack 1000
This really has nothing to do with the avast! Free/Pro/Suite forum, even with a degree of latitude I don’t even see why it would go in the General forum either.

I don’t really care how other AVs deal with updates and scanning, my only concern is how avast does that, more so since this is the official ‘avast! support forum.’

What AV I had seven years a go is pretty immaterial.

8

I thought he was bragging on Avast, you seem a little harsh on him

9

this is a topic for the “general” forum.

10

Agreed. Thread was posted in wrong section of forum.

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I don’t know if this was directly at me, if so, no I don’t think it harsh as it really has nothing to do with the avast! Free/Pro/Suite forum, e.g. how other AVs deal with updates and scanning, etc.

As you can see from the other posts above it rapidly deteriorated into a tell me your story waffle, which again really shouldn’t be in the avast! Free/Pro/Suite forum.

12

So why do not you move it to the General section or lock it? Really I wonder sometime what the moderators are good for here. >:(

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Because I’m not a moderator or guess what, I would have.

14

David made a good argument here.

15

Sorry!

Mods or admin, please move to the appropriate forum! ;D

Right, I was telling about how I got to my experiences with Avast and discovered its greatness over time.

Jack

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I don’t think it “deteriorated” at all and I also think it is appropritae for where it was posted. It was meant ,in my view, to promote Avast! by comparing it to other offerings and pointing out it’s strong points compared to those other products. People new to Avast! could find some of the information given to be useful. Just because we already know these things doesn’t mean everybody does.

17

Agreed. Its not totally inappropriate although SOME replies are a bit off topic… Before purchasing a software, especially a security suite, some people tend to check out the forums/ ask others, do online searches about the software, and if they look around Avast! forums they will come straight to this section… its good as long as you stick to the topic :slight_smile:

18

I was using Norton Antivirus from the time I started using a computer and once I got to know about how it uses up system resources I checked the other best AVs available at the time, and if I’m correct Kaspersky and Bitdefender were on top at the time. I tried out both, but bit defender gave me so much trouble that I had to format my computer a several times and then I realized Bit Defender was the cause of it. It had a huge incompatibility with the system I had, or with the windows version I had at the time.

Then I went on with Kaspersky till the begining of last year. Had a huge issue with it, whenever it was updating it used up my processor 100% ( I had another laptop at the time, not the one mentioned in my signature, it had similar specs but the processor was a centrino2 core2duo)

So the system started to freeze everytime it was updating, and then it was not only when KIS was updating, it started happening very frequenty which got terribly annoying and no matter how many times I contacted the KIS support, they couldnt identify the problem. Then Avast was recommended by a friend and I was reluctant to try it out at first, but I installed the free version and was fully satisfied, it speeded up my computer greatly! I finally decided to purchase the Internet Security later on, and I have to say, I’m thoroughly satisfied with this product and would fully recommend it to ANYONE!

Also there was a recent experience I’d like to share, I had a malware attack and Avast kept detecting it as a network threat but couldnt pin point to the cause of it. Then with every scan it said I had threats in my memory modules - programs that was running, Skype, chrome and several others. I wanted to see if Kaspersky would detect it so I removed Avast and installed the trial version of KIS 2011, updated it fully and scanned the computer, it didnt detect anything! I was really happy that Avast atleast DETECTED there was a suspicious activity! Then the forum moderators/ senior members of Avast! informed me about Malwarebyte’s antimalware (MBAM) and it got rid of the problem for me and everythings back to normal! :smiley: Avast IS + MBAM pro = the best protection you can get IMO :slight_smile: I also have SAS pro but disabled the real time protection as 3 resident programs would cause a conflict ( I had them installed for a couple of days but nothing went wrong, still better stick with 2…) PC performance also increased significantly after removing the threats with MBAM.

19

I kicked off with McAfee VirusScan in the late 1990s, which seemed like a pretty good product at the time. Then I had Norton Antivirus 2002 for a couple of years; that was also a good product (until recent versions). In about 2004 I downloaded avast! 4 and have been using and installing it on my own and other’s PCs since then. It’s a good piece of software for novices, as it has minimal pop-ups and requests for user interaction.

Version 6 is a nice upgrade, though I hope it doesn’t become too bloated like a lot of once-good software has done over the years (Nero, PowerDVD, etc.). I’d like to see less prominent nags for upgrades to premium versions in the UI, and the sandbox mode doesn’t really work for me. Scanning exe files also seems to take a lot longer than it used to; perhaps it’s being more thorough?

Cheers :slight_smile: