I just took a look at the latest AV Comparitives test and Avast! Pro looked pretty decent at 91.06%. Check it out http://www.av-comparatives.org
I am very happy with Avast! and their forum here is very good.
Yeah,better than AVG and SOPHOS and very very close to Trend Micro. Although it could be better though…
Norton score well at detecting trojan ???
but in real world Norton always fail to detect such as small trojan.
Had a look.
Already posted: [General Topics] Re: AV-comparatives retrospective/pro active May’05 by Nicolas
As a scientist, not a computer specialist, I do not have any confidence in these tests. I doubt distinct Antivirus products are comparable at all.
Congratulations for all! Thanks to superb ALWIL team, avast goes better and better. ;D
Why do you say that? If all the distinct products are exposed to the same threat samples under the same conditions then their ability to detect the threats is what is being compared. Is this not an effective means to test the various AV products? I am curious as to why you say this.
The problem is all AVs are not equal, some have only on-demand scan functions whilst others have both on-access and on-demand and avast! also has Network Shield and Web Shield, not to mention the p2p, IM, email resident scanners and boot-time scan, much of which is not tested or compared because others don’t have them.
So it is extremely difficult to have a level playing field as far as testing is concerned when only a limited testing doesn’t show the full level of protection.
So should something with only on-demand scan function be rated higher than an AV with much greater multi level protection based only limited functions.
I think these tests do not compare the final product but the hability of detection: signature databases (and Heuristics).
Does anyone have information on the resouce load footprint that Avast uses? I want to stay with my Win98SE OS for now and am tired of the bloated newer version AV programs required which take up my limited resources.
I only have 96 RAM Pentium II hardware and so I need an AV program that will not impact my system using “real time protection”, commonly called “on-access” protection I guess.
I have read that NOD32 uses a very small footprint using limited resources, but of course it costs for annual subscription for DB updates. I think that as far as manual scanning AVAST may not be that fast, but that’s okay since it can be done with the screen saver I am told. Hopefully the program can be set to only scan one time when the screen saver is launched and not just loop. More important to me is the “on-access” protection footprint on the system.
I am leaning toward trying AVAST for home use, anyone know how they stand with using system resources for “real time protection” ? ???
Thanks in advance.
Why do you say that? If all the distinct products are exposed to the same threat samples under the same conditions then their ability to detect the threats is what is being compared. Is this not an effective means to test the various AV products? I am curious as to why you say this.
Sorry for my delayed reply. But DavidR and Tech already explained the main reason.
Moreover, several AV products use the same virus definitions and/or engine but nevertheless score differently. Because the testers did not (or could not) use the latest versions !
avast! is very configurable. You can choose the providers you want and the sensitivity level you need (protection level).
I’ve used AVG, NAV, McAfee and find avast! very confortable on resources, although, I fortunatelly have a better machine than yours.
Set the sensitivity level of Standard Shield to ‘Custom’ level and uncheck the scanning of open/created/modified files on-access.
I am leaning toward trying AVAST for home use, anyone know how they stand with using system resources for "real time protection" ?
NOD32 uses about 13.5 MB of RAM; about the same as Avast with resident scanners running (if I’m wrong about Avast, please correct).
The problem is how much RAM you have. A Pentium II is adequate.
explain this please!
explain this please!
I don’t refer to your site, but to some sites that compare AV’s in spite of knowing this.
For instance, Kaspersky (and also Dr Web) have a high update frequency, which other companies (some depending on them !) can’t meet. There is an amount of retardation involved which should be taken into account when testing.
When a new virus appears in the wild, some AV companies are very quick (notably Kaspersky) to supply a def, others follow within a few days. But the damage has already been done, anyway.
This test is for pure on-demand detection and has nothing to do with reaction times or capability of proactive detection. Well second one helps to achieve higher score,but thats pretty much all.
Yeah.
e.g. Command uses the F-Prot defs; and also in case of ITW outbreaks Command release the fprot updates a bit delayed. in non-outbreaks times you can imagine that the delay can be also bigger. The reason is sometimes that the other company has to implement the updates in their scanner or that they have to upload them to their own servers, which will result in delayed times.
I would not be surprised if Kaspersky delays a few hours before suplying it’s definitions to other AV companies like F-Secure 