Spyware, viruses, & security forum: avast! or AVG

I am a power user and software collector who download just about everything available on the Net, and all I can say about this Avast vs AVG debate is : I've been using Avast for 5 years on my 4 PCs and I have NEVER had a virus on any of them. The updates have been done automaticaly and regularly all the time. What more can you ask from a free antivirus software.

As posted, most people would agree that avast! wins out against AVG.

avast! is superior in terms of overall detection and interface. While the latter point is a little less important, the former is certainly one of the main things that anyone looks for in an antivirus program.

As proven by http://www.av-comparatives.org (a site that conducts tests on AV apps every 3-4 months or so with the latest tests in February and May of this year [Note, I cannot post results here. Go to the website and click on "Comparatives" on the left hand bar), avast! beats AVG out in on-demand (your regular manual scan that you initiate yourself) detection and pro-active (detecting and blocking viruses as they appear on your PC).

However, I must mention that the control centre in AVG is much more intuitive than other free-AVs that I've tried. Although avast! boasts a "On-Access Scanner Control", it still doesn't compare to the features of the CC in AVG.

On another point, AVG is a tiny bit lighter on resources than avast! is, especially more noticeable on an older system.

I've had both programs running on my 533 Mhz P-Celeron with 64 RAM and dial-up internet (I'm not joking everyone) and any larger consumption in resources is easily noticed.

Of course, with today's PCs being like 7 to 10 times faster than my old machine, that point may be irrelevant, unless you have a ridiculous number of active processes.

Overall, I prefer avast! more than AVG even though has its positive points.

However as I've preached many times before, I believe that another antivirus app trumps both avast! and AVG.

If you looked at av-comparatives from above, you may have noticed that a program called AntiVir [http://www.free-av.com] did particularly well. Guess what, it has a FREE version. There are very missing features missing from this version, including stuff like a tiny bit slower definition database download, lack of phone support (forums and manual are adequate in my opinion) Although I've never experienced this, I've read in forums and from other places that there is an apparent nag-screen that persuades you to purchase a copy of premium.

But when you look at the results from av-comparatives, it's pretty definitive that AntiVir did very well and was better than programs such as Norton and PC-Cillin.

Both premium and free editions use the exact same update definition base so there is no fear of being less protected.

On a side note, avast! did beat AntiVir in proactive scanning in May. If you read the PDF report, it will outline that although AntiVir was very effective at finding new threats to your system, it came up with a few more false positives than other programs like avast! and thus was penalized as a user needs a program that can determine what is good and what is bad and not have the user make that decision. However, AntiVir is still worth looking into.

So visit http://www.av-comparatives and http://www.free-av.com

-Sinkhan

Running Windows 7, Dv5-1254us, Was using AVG (paid version) but it was screwing up my internet explorer,

switched to free version, worked great.

recently switched to Avast, like look and feel, but performance wise it's slowing my computer.

Point is I'm going to give Avast a week,
if nothing changes then going back to AVG free.

And might I add I hope it works.

P.S. What did you learn from this thread, did you pick AVG or Avast?