Is Avast Home Edition better than Microsoft Security Essentials?
That’s a strange question to ask on the avast! Forum. ??? ;D
No anti virus application provides 100% protection from the current prolific malware purveyors and Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a good addition for system malware detection.
Do not have MSE’s real-time protection active as they will conflict with each other if some malware is detected.
I like Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MBAM) Full as it provides additional protection against malware hence its name and it does not conflict with avast!
I feel the MAJOR difference between the 2 is the quality of Support of their
Online Support Forums ; recently, I spent some time on the MSE Support
Forums and came away impressed with the lack of quality . It seems anything
beyond the limited knowledge of the “main” Moderator is referred to their
email Support ( who know what that quality is !? ) .
So lots of luck if your MSE gives a suspicious “Detection” .
If you get a suspicious detection, simply use the following:
http://www.virustotal.com/images/en_virustotal-uploader.png
VirusTotal Uploader
This little Windows Only utility automatically uploads any file to online virus scanner VirusTotal,
scanning it for viruses with 41 different popular antivirus applications—and now it’s even better and faster,
with instant hash checking, letting you skip uploads altogether.
It’s something you should be doing regardless of which avtivirus program your using.
I read through a lot of messages, but I still don’t understand if using those two together is a good idea.
Clearly, without substantial memory, Avast+MSE is a problem, wrestling the machine to the ground. Now that I have a 7-64-bit PC now, with 6G memory, I am tempted…
Is there a simple answer?
It’s not a memory issue, it’s the issue of two different scanners with two different signature databases essentially competing with each other. One may block the other and result in a lower detection rate than if you used either one by itself. One may find something safe and attempt to skip it while the other finds it bad and tries to remove it at the same time. It’s just never a good idea to run more than one real time scanning engine at a time.
Thank you, I’ll stick with Avast. Antimalware and SuperAntiSpyWare additions should be OK - both have caught vermin that went by Avast.