Is it ok not to have a real time shields installed for the moderate to advance user? I am possibly asking this in the wrong place–if I had better system & was on high speed I would most likely keep Avast Free installed. I notice daily update for the virus take 25 minutes on dial-up.
I have Clamwin, Malwarebytes, Spybot - Search & Destroy installed. Clamwin does not have a realtime shield. The other two do, but I don’t use them. I do scan with all of those product when I download a new program. I done full system scans as well-no problems.
Not having the real-time shields installed kind of negates the purpose of having a resident anti-virus and essentially shouldn’t make any difference to the auto updates as they would still be updated to maintain an up to date virus definitions.
I don’t know what is wrong with your dial-up, even when I was on dial-up mine didn’t take minutes and nowhere close to 25 minutes.
The avast auto updates for virus definitions are incremental and are generally measured in KBs not MBs, so I can’t see how the auto update would take 25 minutes (how are you measuring this ?).
Are you manually updating the virus definitions or are you allowing the auto update of virus definitions ?
What is your operating system and firewall ?
Personally I would get rid of Spybot s&d as it brings little to the party, you have MBAM free and avast, both of with look for spyware.
Windows xp sp3
Old sygate firewall-I like it,
I ask to be notified when update are available. When they updated it took 25 minutes. I totally disabled the firewall before updating. Avast reported the download time.
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06/04/2012 12:52:34 (Time may be off by 1 hour)
I was correct-wrong place to ask. I also have a windows 98se installed as well (Dual boot-using System commander-completely separate), no realtime scanner installed. Have spybot & clamwin installed, no viruses or spyware reported. I scanned from the windows xp side using MB & Avast & Spybot. My 98se system & xp are both clean. The actually answer to my question is Yes if you have other protection software and scan downloaded files and do a full scan at least once a month. Yes, I use the internet on Windows 98se sometimes. Mac & Linux system’s you don’t need a virus scanner or Malware scanner (I know there a debate on this)
One thing Avast should default to is scanning a 7zip fie.
I will be calling my provider up, about the slow dial-up.
I also a member at spybot S&D forums as well.
If you insist on keeping SpyBot S&D at least turn off the tea timer. I agree with Asyn get rid of SpyBot S&D as it’s not that good.
You will find MalwareBytes and Super Anti-Spyware will do better. SpyBot has not kept up with the times IMHO. SpyBot S&D is a resource hog and doesn’t do any real good. 
Real time shield is as what it says, your first line in defense, so have it up by all means,
polonus