a couple of questions regarding free AVs :)

thanks, i'm using Ubuntu full time atm. but, if i do boot into XP i'll try out eTrust.

i didn't have time to set up AntiVir. i'll spend some time going through all the options when i'm next there. i know it's always a good idea to check for F/Ps but, do AntiVir's heuristics generally have alot of F/Ps?

 

i am surprise no one mention the lack of web scanner in AntiVir. Email scanner was never a problem but webpage are directly render without going through hard disk. Pesonally i dont think this is much of a problem since i use Firefox and safe browsing. But average home user may want a web scanner i suppose?

Antivir needs little tweaking to set it up so it doesn't have nag screen and to update it sliently. Resources usage is good not to mention detection rate is shooting up since version 7. And it has Heuristic as well, which is constanly being tweaked so i think there should be less false positive now.

The update problem differ from place to places. Some find the update is nmuch quicker now other still find it slow. Personally i only have problem when they need to download the whole program update ( 10Mb. ) which slows down the whole network. Otherwise it is working well.

Edit: Ever since i try FProt 6 i kinda think Antivir 7 is a free alt of it. They both offer similar features and resources usage. Except AntiVir is free, and ofcoz since IC is working in FProt now i suppose FProt protection is slightly better

Avast is much faster and smoother on update and have different type of scanner as well for web and p2p as well as email. It only have heuristic for mail scanner. Resource usage is a little higher then Antivir. One thing i don't like is that they have 4 - 5 process runing at the same time.

In terms of easy to use. Once AV are set up proberly you really should be touching them again. They should auto update itself and runs in the background. So i never have problem with its "usage". It is only the Setup and tweaking at start that matters.

 

It has been discussed many times and u can live without it quite safe, however preferences vary.

 

I have never had a false positive except during the beta testing of the new heuristik engine. Then again, it detected PestPatrol, which is more of a threat to your computer than a help .

Alphalutra1

 

Antivir does has false positives acc to av org report and I think they must trying to fix them. After reading this report I changed my heuristics settings from high to medium.

 

I have had Full Hueristics on High since February, only "False Positive" was during first scan of old Win98 backup system and that was two CAB Files from an old install download for Outlook 98. Version 6 had flag on that old Panda Scan .dll (which according to Google was also a "virus" according to AVG and Avast). I would rather investigate a detection than miss a True Positive, which is why I choose High. Just don't delete anything without investigation.

 

U are right but for ordinary user the false positives are as imp as false vegatives. Even I personally don,t like to ba alarmed and making a search on net, uploading files to jotti and virus total etc and finally knowing that the alarm was false.

 

Yeah, Jotti's online malware scanner note says everything (screen).

 

Jotti's is a two-edged sword.
Jerry

 

thanks everyone. i'll set the heuristics to medium.

 

Same here, only a single false positive, it was at the beginning of new heuristics, several months ago .

Always set on HIGH since, and working smooth.

Cheers,

nicM

 

Um... i must have missed it then. But during my time here i dont record one thread about this. A serach dont turn out anything useful. Do you record when was the discussion made on?

 

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=124386&highlight=Antivir Avast
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=126455&highlight=Antivir Avast
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=130254&highlight=Antivir Avast

See if it helps.