If Avast buys or adds a Herustic product and adds it to there antivirus products it could detect more types of viruses and a lot of people would use it. I really this avast is a good Antivirus 
but it needs Herustics.
Well with a 99.2% detection rating in some AV tests, avast doesn’t do so badly for an anti-virus supposedly without heuristics.
In fact by many interpretations avast could be considered to use heuristics, in the form of generic and algorithmic signatures.
It also uses heuristics in the anti-rootkit module and Internet Mail provider.
This will be further refined in avast version5.
Define Heuristics…
And you’ll see that avast already has it as David said.
The overall detection is what counts, not the advertisement of the products to sell…
What I mean is that in the On access scanner each of the providers could use Heuristics. If this happens in a newer version of avast, Maybe avast could have a higher detection than Avira and might be able to detect more than 99%.
It’s already there with generic signatures and algorithms detection…
I vote for ALWIL guys to just add “Heuristics” checkbox, even of it does absolutelly nothing. But it would calm down everyone. ;D
I think the same…
-= and some sort of slider to set sensitivity of heuristics…
And it does nothing except slide, and remember the last position slid to.
-= eh…? ???
-= Somehow, I’m still not-so-sure if heuristics will be a help for avast or a cause for more FPs… I’d better wait & see…
-= :-\ I feel dizzy… Don’t know why…
To me, the main point of this thread was made by Tech, who said “Define Heuristics.”
From a software writing point of view, I wouldn’t have the foggiest. And I think that statement was made for other users in the same position, who might be prepared to buy the sales hype. (And in some cases, it probably is hype.)
99.2% with/without heuristics^^(in any case)–i dnt know for sure^^
Thats big enough for a FREE antivirus^^
Also, i think the heuristic scanning will increase the rate of false positives^^(just maybe)^^–my opinion only^^
-AnimeLover^^
Well, antivirus can also have proactive features (heuristics) that are not even controlable by user.
There is already a number of these features, but there are more coming with version 5.
I could be wrong, but I think they will assume avast 5 has proactive (heuristic) methods clearly.
Hi all!
Define heuristics?
Generally: Heuristics = guessing.
Guesses can be good or bad, well or ill informed, right or wrong.
Guesswork is often a useful thing but you wouldn’t want to bet your life, or your life savings (Did I hear someone say; ‘Global Financial Crisis’?), on it!
Now back to avast!
If avast! is to have heuristic analysis in the Standard Shield, it will need to be very good heuristic analysis. The word ‘heuristics’ is not magic. (BTW, love the fake slider joke ;D.)
I think the semantic issue stems in part from when ESET (a company for which I otherwise have great respect) began using the term “Advanced Heuristics” as a label for what they describe in detail as behavior analysis.
How come we are sensitive to the fact that AVAst supposedly lacks heur but not to the fact that it detects 99… of the malware?
Question 1- what the heck does it lack or miss with the 99% detection?
Answer- Nothing ! It has it all . glory
guys it is a very big antivirus. No need to become a fan boy. I have used AVG KASPERSKY AVIRA PCTOOLS BLALAALA BLA . All of them have weaknesses, and please do not tell me they don’t we all know they do.
They are heavy nagging sloppy mushy gushy .
Avast is simple plain usable and 99% secure and none better than AVAST
It is not that avast lacks heuristics that people are sensitive to (as you say), just that heuristics isn’t the be all and end all to protection, and as has been mentioned elements of avast already use what could be classified as heuristics.
-= Well, we could say that it is 99% & really close to perfection… But still, in my opinion, while there is room for improvement, let’s take opportunities & try our best to make the 99% higher… even a 0.1% or 0.2% counts… 
Well 99,2 % of virus is better than nothing. Also for people that pay they got a extra protection and thingy. So yeah its worth of what they pay and yes some times they will say Avast! will fail to block something like that but no 1 anti virus will can stop all malware of the internet !!! So a anti spyware or anti malware is required as second scanner so if Avast! didnt catch some then your second scanner will got a chance to see it. So 99,2 % chance of detecting the virus on internet and the 0,8 % then the anti spyware or malware can maybe detect it. Also many users take Avast! as a firewall but its cover only the network like i say its for help the firewall but yeah its not a firewall. But its comming soon. Let wait and be enought mature to wait their version 5.0
Sry if i offensed some guys or something but its was needed my speech.
Mr.Agent
While the on-demand AV Comparatives of 2/2009 showed about 98.2% detection rate for Avast, the Nov 2008 proactive/retrospective report shows what behavior blocking/heuritics is capable of doing. While Antivir and Kaspersky showed a detection rate of 60-70%, Avast Professional showed 30-40%. While it may be easy to dismiss this, this is what the OP is referring to and should be recognized for the improvements that are possible.