Yes! The best strategy to keep Avast Home free might be to pay for the Pro version. (That makes more sense.)
I think AVAST Home is for children with their own PC’s, students or people use only PC time to time. If you aren’t a child, you aren’t student and you have got a job, maybe you can purchase AVAST! Pro
For those who don’t know, I’m a student. However whenever I get some money I can spend I use it on something I want, which includes avast! Pro. I’ve purchased avast! Pro in the past and plan to in the near future again.
Ok, but not all students have got money ;).
When i was student, i was very very poor. And when i had money, iowned books and more books. Life of students. If your parents can’t pay your studies, you need to work to do it. And when i had a bit of free time and a bit of money, “fiestaaaaaaaaa”.
I had my first PC when i was 23, and when i owned it was uotdated,hahaha.
Now i’m teacher and i have got no money ,hahahaha.
Always a lot of bills.
But: AVG is much lighter on memory than avast, maybe because AVG only has a standard shield 
Personally i don’t care how light AVG Free is, detection rate is much more important. And on that front AVG Free sux …
It isn’t, it just appears that way. It runs some of its services as kernel level so they don’t show up as AVG, in normal resource monitoring. This was mentioned previously by one of the Alwil team Vlk or Igor I believe.
Read this thread for more info …
Maybe that’s the reason why it is running fine on my old laptop :-X
I don’t wish to rain on the parade but there are also disadvantages which Vlk also mentioned.
The disadvatange is that any error in the engine usually means instant computer crash (or instant reboot). Also, porting most stuff to kernel-mode is quite hard - so e.g. unpacking support is harder to implement in this case (especially if you want/need to use 3rd party code). That's one of the reasons you cannot enable archive unpacking in AVG's on-access scanner, by the way... WinkAlso, it’s worth noting that this model had been used by Norton and McAfee (roughly till their 2004 versions). It was abandoned then - I suppose they figured out that the drawbacks simply outweighted the benefits.
So whilst it hides some resources, giving the illusion that it is much lighter in resources, but it’s just an illusion.
From my (attached) observations only, it seems that with version 8.0, AVG have abandoned in-kernel model (though still no “Scan inside archives” option for “Resident Shield”). On sample PC, default AVG 8.0 install adds about 35 physical and 65 virtual to memory use. AVG 8.0 Free should be lower as it will have fewer features.
This should be a very simple choice:
If you think AVG is as good as avast! and uses fewer resources,
then uninstall avast! and use AVG.
My personal choice is simple. AVG isn’t even in the running and
I’ll continue to use avast!
I’m an ex-AVG user… I can’t compare it with avast: number of updates, servers available, GUI, features, configurability, etc. etc. Why downgrade? ;D
Very sound advice Bob… so I’m stickng with avast! like you and Tech.
One of my clients has AVG Pro licenses and I’ve just upgraded them from 7.5 to 8.0, which afforded the opportunity for a bit of a poke around. The AVG 8.0 download is 60MB :o …obviously dial-up users need not apply. ;D
Me 2. But AVG update once a day is similar to avast, and i never had problems with the servers. The reason why I changed to avast were the spyware signatures. And yes, webshield is also a good feature. But let’s have a look at AVG 8 which also includes a spyware modul.
avast has no comparison/similarity at all to AVG’s once a day update, avast in the past has had as many as 4-5 VPS updates in a day.
Lucky you… I had tons…
A free version of avast! keeps a highly active support forum with great support and more users to report bugs fp’s & more to try betas.
People are more likely to brag on a great free AV than a paid version. At least one person that I recommended avast! to bought the Pro version. He came up to me after trying the free Home Edition & said it is awesome. He was using Kaspersky, avast! found & removed stuff that KAV couldn’t find. He bought the Pro because he liked the layour better than in the Home Edition.
Us avast! Home Edition users do earn our keep.
Not to mention that if you need help, their forums REALLY suck wind.
BTW, any one else having problems with these forums dropping out from time to time?
rdmaloyjr
I didn’t mean to imply that any avast! Home, non-commercial users (especially forum contributors) should be motitvated to buy Pro by guilt or feeling of obligation. :o
It just seems to me that if more people who can pay, do pay, the more likely it is that Alwil will continue to be able to provide such a comprehensive AV for free.
Also, would you say that the guy who ended up buying ‘Pro’ after trying ‘Home’, decided to feed the hand that bites! …the malware that is. ;D