Avast Pro v Avast Home Free Edition

Is there much of a diff between the pro version and free version of these products from Avast.

Also has anybody tried the Pro version of Avast and whats your view on it, also how does it compare to that of AVG Pro.

 

Take a look here.

The extra features of the Pro Edition include; Enhanced User Interface, Command Line Scanner, Push Updates, Script Blocker and a Task Scheduler.

 

...and the most important one: the legal ability to use it in non-home or commercial environment...

 

GUI of Avast Pro is nice and does have a professional looking than its free version and having more options for control over the program while GUI of AVG Pro is a bit cumbersome IMHO.

But I noticed that Avast Pro (and its free versional Avast Home) is so slower than AVG especially when opening a large file/program that it took a bit delay than AVG did. AVG Pro/Free is very very lite and extremely unobtrusive (I think AVG is liter than NOD32, eTrust, F-Prot, Dr.Web) I haven't noticed if AVG is installed on my computer unless I see its colorful icon or it updates or it finds something while Avast is a bit obtrusive when scanning something.

I know most of you here migh say that AVG is inferior scanner when compared to Avast and Others because of several test results out there. But that's just another test in the lab environement, in the real world AVG Free gives me a very good protection, AVG Free always keeps my computer clean and stay clean while I don't need to sacrifice my computer's speed or money to other AVs for stay clean, AVG Free even catches some mass-mailing worms that Trend Micro has missed in Hotmail attachments from time to time.

For other instance, about 2 or 3 weeks ago my friend told me that his antivirus Avast Home kept on telling him "Connection timeout/Suspicious message!" I know something went wrong there. I installed AVG Free on his computer and did a scanning so AVG Free came up with his computer had infected by Proxy.ASQ that tried to send a large amount of spam mails from his computer and Avast Home completely missed it. I got to safe mode and ran AVG Free so this trojan was get rid of.


Avast had still missed this trojan until 09/12/2005 that this trojan was added to its VPS, this trojan known by Avast as Win32:Trojano-3028 [Trj]. Today I sent a sample to VirusTotal and found the following result

AntiVir 6.33.0.61 12.09.2005 TR/Proxy.Delf.AA.3
Avast 4.6.695.0 12.10.2005 Win32:Trojano-3028
AVG 718 12.08.2005 Proxy.ASQ
Avira 6.33.0.61 12.09.2005 TR/Proxy.Delf.AA.3
BitDefender 7.2 12.11.2005 no virus found
CAT-QuickHeal 8.00 12.09.2005 TrojanProxy.Delf.aa
ClamAV devel-20051108 12.09.2005 Trojan.Gobot-7
DrWeb 4.33 12.10.2005 Trojan.Spabot
eTrust-Iris 7.1.194.0 12.09.2005 no virus found
eTrust-Vet 11.9.1.0 12.09.2005 Win32.Chopham.E
Fortinet 2.54.0.0 12.10.2005 W32/Delf.AA!tr
F-Prot 3.16c 12.09.2005 no virus found
Ikarus 0.2.59.0 12.11.2005 no virus found
Kaspersky 4.0.2.24 12.11.2005 Trojan-Proxy.Win32.Delf.aa
McAfee 4647 12.09.2005 no virus found
NOD32v2 1.1317 12.09.2005 probably a variant of Win32/Spy.Delf.IG
Norman 5.70.10 12.09.2005 W32/Delf.CZM
Panda 8.02.00 12.10.2005 no virus found
Sophos 4.00.0 12.10.2005 no virus found
Symantec 8.0 12.11.2005 no virus found
TheHacker 5.9.1.052 12.09.2005 Trojan/Proxy.Delf.aa
VBA32 3.10.5 12.09.2005 Trojan-Proxy.Win32.Delf.a


Yeah... This is another real-life story in the real world.

 

As an ex AVG Pro user, I find Avast to be far better in system response as well as features,I had a suspicion that my system was infected with a virus I received from mail, scanned with AVG and it found nothing, un-installed AVG and installed Avast and did the boot time scan which is among one of the most powerful features in Avast and not only it found the virus but also deleted it. With all the modules enabled, there is absolutely no slowdowns with Avast. I open 50mb images with Adobe PS and see no impact with Avast running.

 

Glad you spoke up Arup. Always thought of AVG as a toy compared to Avast. But it's been at least a year since I used either.

 

@AVG Free user
Can you please submit that sample to BitDefender's lab? I'm very surprises that BitDefender, McAfee and Symantec didn't catch it