Is Avast better then AVG or AntiVir?
Reason I ask I was listing to a Leo Laporte pod cast and someone called up asking him how Avast is and Leo said Avast is pretty good but he also said Avast does not catch as many viruses as other Anti Virus software like AVG or AntiVir. He said he recommends AntiVir right now as the best.
What do you guys think?
No anti-virus software got that W32bagel mess I just had get by the avast out of my computer. I threw every virus remover out there at it. None of them got it. The ewido anti-malware scanner was the only thing that found enough of it that I could track down the rest, but even the ewido only got half of it.
Hi Gate :
When I was looking to replace my bloatware Norton AV
over a yr ago, I considered Avast, AVG, & Antivir ; my
"invesigation" resulted in the following "rankings" :
1) Avast ; 2) AVG ; 3) AntiVir .
I’d say avast! and AntiVir are even, though AntiVir 7 became really good lately. AVG is not really something that i’d recommend to anyone.
That guy has no clue if he says that AVG is better than avast!.
Follow this… :-*
avast > Antivir > AVG sequence 8)
avast! is light years ahead of the other two in features. They both seem stone age in comparison. : But avast! really does need to work on detection rates! :-\ 
Well avast! certanly lacks lots of stuff where AntiVir takes the lead (heuristics, almost hourly updates(they update several times a day), strong emulator etc).
Alwil guys should take more advantage with generic signatures i guess.
McAfee is a pure example of excellent generic signatures use. They do it for lots of malware. They have heuristics but majority of detections come from generic part.
There are few gen signatures for SdBots but i’d expect more of this. Or is it just me…
EDIT:
Sorry guys, no matter how patriotic we want to be to avast!, but fact is that AntiVir has more advanced scan engine than both AVG and avast! together). I like avast! too, but thats undeniable fact. Especially ANtiVir heuristics part of the engine is very close to NOD32 and BitDefender which is very good achievement considering these two are the leading in this field. Unless Alwil guys can show us something more impressive (since there is no heuristics i’d put greater hope in generics). But thats mostly speculation since i don’t make any of the programs. Just what i se on the field.
Did you manage to use Antivir 7 as a non-resident scanner with avast (as being resident)?
Which is your resident scanner?
McAfee’s also got 187,358 signatures in the database as of right now.
Number of signatures has nothing to be with better or worse detection.
Different names, family of viruses, generic names and families, etc. etc.
Discussed earlier 
McAfee is heavily relying on strong generic detection. And it’s very good at it.
I tend to agree with RejZoR about how AntiVir and avast! are but for overall solutions I personally think avast! is better, Trend Micro and CA eTrust both they seem to don’t have any advaned scan engine but they can achieve in AV business field too.
In my mind now there’re only AntiVir and avast! that I can trust, AVG is something I can’t feel safe with it even it’s OK. Even when the new avast! 4.7 beta is really light and causes a very little impact than ever before on several machines I tested so now I have no reasons to think about AVG (when the only AVG advantage is its light, IMHO). ;D
Even on a slow laptop (P-M 1.3 GHz, RAM 256 MB, Windows XP) the new avast! 4.7 beta is still light in real-time scanning (while avast! 4.6 is a bit slow), great!!!
No doubt about this. I’m in favor of heuristic and generic detection too. Just number of virus tells nothing, you know…
RejZor, can you answer my previous questions about the second antivirus? Thanks.
Avast is far superior to AntiVir,I won’t even bring AVG,I have used both AntiVir and AVG extensively before becoming a permanent Avast fan,so have many of my friends and colleagues who after having used various programs,permanently settled for Avast,AntiVir doesn’t even come close to the protection module of Avast,no web shield,and only the pro version of AntiVir has mail scanner in it.Another important aspect at least to me is the option of boot time scan which is important for infected system files which can’t be cleaned while in Windows session,you have to clean them at boot time,only Avast has this feature of all the three AVs mentioned in this thread,so in the end,balance is heavily tilted toward Avast.
You are absolutely right Arup, but detection rates count, dont they? And as far as detection rates are concerned, AntiVir is far ahead… Though i havent tried AntiVir as of yet, i do believe its lighter than Avast… Oh and yes, since im running XP x64, AntiVir is out of question, and AVG, id never use 
By the way, right now, im using NOD32…
On my machine, the new avast! 4.7 beta is as light as AntiVir and AVG. About AntiVir, if its heuristics enabled (medium or high), I can feel some impact in real-time performance.
About overall detection rates, I know AntiVir Classic is a bit better than avast! Home but I can’t really feel safe with AntiVir (or AVG) since it can be configured to checking for updates only once a day (while avast! Home can check for updates hourly) but the fact is that you can have outbreak several times a day and you don’t know when, especially if using on a family computer that online almost 24 hours a day. I personally don’t believe in its heuristics.
In my mind, avast! Home is far more reliable than both AntiVir Classic and AVG Free in this aspect since I know my avast! can be automatically updated as soon as it has the new VPS available.
Arup is right but all advantages - email module and protection, boot time scanning, etc. - means nothing if the detection is not the best possible…
My opinion is that it isn’t an answer to the question in the thread.
What CAN be measured is detection rates in which Avast not outperforms the two others in any way.
I am happy with the webshield, but it too needs signatures.
But I like Avast and I am still using it.
Thanks to Alwil for a good product.
HL
Tech, i always use only 1 resident (except few experiments).
avast! is main at the moment since i’m beta testing it.
AntiVir 7 should work just fine with it i belive (On-Demand only of course).
So what do the makers of Avast need to do to get it neck and neck with AntiVir?