I know someones on this forum don’t appreciate tests when they are bads for avast;and appreciate the same test s when they’re good for it.
The new results in av.comparatives.org of november are rather explicits about heuristic necessity
does this mean you want your money back?
have a read of this discussion http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=4979 I dont nessesarily disagree with you but i think you should be be realistic 
It has nothing to do with money.I remember avast team said heuristiic is provided for avast!
your politness equals your narrow-mindedness
avast! uses heuristics for e-mail protection (i.e. it gives you warning when a suspicious e-mail is sent/received). The heuristics is based on the properties of the e-mail, though - not on the (possibly attached) file itself.
avast! does not use heuristics for ordinary (on-demand) file scanning, as was said here multiple times. Or rather - it has a generic detection, mostly used for trojans, but it doesn’t use “heuristics” in NOD32-sense of the word, for example.
IF you want heuristic scanning I recommend F-Secure it has a 3rd engine specifically for heuristic scanning. It also has the KAV 4.5 engine so there is an added bonus as well.
Avast has no heuristic detection aside from the mail scanner, but it still detects all of the ITW viruses (looking at the virus btn 100% award) what more could you ask for?
I disagree…
We know (or tried to know) how a test is made.
We know that the settings of each antivirus is a determinant factor of the test.
We know that a lot of tests are maid with specific (theoretical) group of viruses.
We know that a lot of testers are guided to the big-called companies.
I have no trouble with avast tests, positive or less positive. I just do not like pseudo results being discussed.
Of course, it’s my opinion and not a personal fight 8)
Would anyone be willing to define Heuristics for the less than technical membership? ???
It came to my attention yesterday when I got a virus
warning on a Christmas card.
Basically, it’s finding a virus on the basis of speculation - the virus scanner believes it to be a virus, but it can’t be 100% sure unless there is signature files available. This is the problem, although it happens rarely, NOD32 and other av companies that use Heuristics will often find files that are OK as infected, which causes a lot of stress.
I think that the only time you would need heuristics is if you owned a large company, that did millions of transactions a day - where your chances of being hit by new viruses was quite high. For home users, it’s really not.
Well in simplest terms, its wehn the Antivirus engine looks at the behavior of a file to see if it is virus-like in any way
One other problem with Heuristics is that it usually causes a greater than normal
amount of false positives. I personally don’t much care for those things and have enough with the few times it now occurs.