Does avast out perform antivir?
What are their detection rates?
I hope the answer is yes ;D
Hi,
This is a matter of opinion. In mine yes avast! does outperform antivir. The paid avast! is more expensive but well worth the money.
Antivir has better detection rates if you can ever get the latest definitions onto your computer. As downloading updates is virtually impossible if you live in the same time zone unless you are an insomniac, the program is virtually unusable. (I did manage to download updates once at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep.)
It also doesn’t have email integration, which makes it a no-no if your ISP doesn’t block viruses.
In other features as well, avast! is far superior. If only they could get the detection rate up a bit…
They are working on better detection rates! Remember not to long ago they hired more Virus analysts
New AntiVir heuristics are outstanding (very close to HiVE and ThreatSense). I wonder when will Alwil guys impliment anything like this…
I am sure they are working on it ;). After all avast! 4.7 will be out soon!
According to the latest av-comparatives.org test, AntiVir has a better overall detection rates than avast! but only by a small margin, for the most inportant group of malware (industry standard) so called ITW , avast! and AntiVir are equally good, according to some tests such as ICSA Labs and Virus Bulletin.
Whens it comes to free editions, avast! Home and AntiVir Classic…
As justin1278 said, it’s just a matter of opinion and what you’re looking for in antivirus software, in my mind avast! does outperform AntiVir in overall soluions.
For example, you can tell avast! home to checking for new VPS updates hourly when you’re online but in AntiVir you can too but every 24 hours.
For me, detection rates are not everything when looking for an antivirus software but overall solutions (features, update mechanism, etc.) are the most important factor for consideration.
Well i wouldn’t exactly agree on definitions either…
AntiVir can also check every hour. Difference is that AntiVir gets it’s defs updated around 3 times a day while avast! gets updated once in 2-3 days.
I know they work fast for outbreaks but i don’t taste them at all unless they are somehow explopit based like Sasser (even though i never got this one either).
I am somehow used to AntiVir, BitDefender and Kaspersky regular through day definitions.
When I configure update interval schedule in the latest version of AntiVir Classic, it tells me I can use only 1,440 minutes, if I remember correctly, its previous version can configure to checking for updates hourly or even every 15 minutes.
Well last time i tried it i could have 60 minutes. Well then it sux if they changed it.
Checking for defs only once per day is not something that i can accept (you can have 5 outbreaks in between and AV won’t even have a clue that they were out there).
Could avast amaze us all, and bring heuristics with version 4.7 ;D
Somehow I doubt that, that would be a major upgrade that would warrant more than a 0.0.237 upgrade. Perhaps version 5 ;D lets start wishing now ;D
There was some talk about heuristics for avast! 5.0 but nothing official (or even unofficial). Generic unpacker is half confirmed thing though.
Still, there was big update just from 4.5 to 4.6, so they can still surprise us with 4.6 to 4.7 transition 
Doesn’t Norton use heuristics? Because they say it can detect some unknown virus threats. Well the 2006 version anyway…
Does anybody have success trying to configure Antivir to run as a second (non-resident, backup) scanner with avast! being the resident?
I’ve failed miserabily with the last Antivir version… so, bye bye Antivir…
Yes, it does.
Norton is using heuristics for very long. I remember NAV2000 having heuristics.
Don’t remember for sure about NAV99 and earlier.
I’m writing here since i used Antivir too. I used the version 6 and then the 7 beta. And I didn’t like those at all. Granted I had the free version but it was totally impossible to update. Even manually. Or when I managed to update it it was early in the morning or late at night. Very aggravating. And the support forum in english wasn’t good at all. very slow and sometime they just said Uninstall and install the program again. but it seems Antivir write lots of entires in the registry that you have to delete manually. A person who doesn’t know how to do it can be very confused.
Maybe Avast is less good in virus detection and depending on the resurces of the system can be a bit heavy on them. But nothing can beat the support forum here. If you need help, you can find it very fast. or you can search for past entry and be sure to find what you need. Choosing an Antivirus is not only a matter of detection. There are lots of other things to consider. i think that, while Antivir had better detection, it lacks in other places, like the mail scanner. So overall i still prefer Avast over it. And to think I got Avast because, once I got tired of Antivir, I mispelled an antivirus name doing a google search. ;D
So far I’m very happy with it.
The only thing i like about Antivir is the name of their scanner… Luke Filewalker … ;D
I really don’t know much/care about Norton since avast! is hear, just was wondering.